510 AMERICAN FORESTRY 



tion. You may print conservation in the press, declaim it from the rostrum, 

 and preach it from the pulpit, but unless you teach it in the school, it must die 

 with the generation that gives its birth. Conservation has become popular 

 today largely because of the wonderful propaganda which has been waged 

 in its favor. But a propaganda is of its nature ephmeral. It cannot last 

 indefinitely; it cannot continue from generation to generation with the same 

 fervor and the siime efficiency that it shows at the climax of its early successes. 

 It must either produce a permanent status or fail. The conservation propa- 

 ganda, has impressed a permanent character on this generation, but it remains 

 for the teachers of the land to decide how many generations it is to persist. 

 Even our legislators have not this power, for though they may enact the 

 soundest legislation, unless they have an educated public opinion to support 

 it, it would be better that the laws had never been made. 



Conservation, in this country as in most countries which have adopted any 

 system of saving their resources, began with forest conservation, because the 

 forests of a country are logically the first of its resources to become impov- 

 erished. A system for the preservation of the forests of the nation was being 

 successfully applied long before its exponents thought of the wider activity. 

 So, forest conserv^ation was the forerunner of the whole conservation move- 

 ment. Furthermore, the same practices which have been demonstrated as true 

 and applicable in the case of the preservation of our woodlands have been 

 found in a general way suited to all our other resources. The general prin- 

 ciples of wise and economical use, elimination of waste, and provision for the 

 future apply as well to minerals, soils, and waters, as to forests. This par- 

 ticular phase of the conservation work, forestry, has, therefore become a type 

 of the rest, and in considering the general principles governing it, we 

 come to understand the principles underlying all conservation. The preser- 

 vation of the forests is intimately associated with the preservation of 

 the land both within and without the forest, which it fertilizes and saves 

 from erosion and floods, with the preservation of the minerals deposited 

 beneath the hills ; with water power and navigation the sources of whose 

 regular supply it rules with our recreation grounds, which depend primarily 

 for their beauty and healthfulness upon the forest; and with our game, which 

 have their life in the woods, and our fish which swim in the waters arising in 

 it. Then, too, of all our resources, the forest is in the most imminent danger 

 of exhaustion, and next to soils is generally admitted to be the most important. 

 Conservation deserves place in the schools ; and the study of the forest and its 

 preservation is a most practicable form in which to teach its principles, 

 especially in the limited time which it is possible for most schools to give to it. 



It is not only as a carrier for the study of general conservation, however, 

 that forestry is valuable. Besides being highly cultural, it holds in itself a 

 rich treasury of useful knowledge. Every citizen should understand the 

 relation of the forest to the industries, the beauties, the health, and wealth 

 of the nation. Such an understanding would make impossible the shameful 

 waste of our forests which has been going on for so many years. A nation 

 which understood its forests and their value would not countenance an annual 

 loss by forest fires of fifty million dollars' worth of timber when that loss 

 could be practically all prevented for an expenditure amounting to about 

 one-fifth that loss, it would not stand idly by and see twice as much timber 

 wasted as is used, it would not permit its woodlands to be so poorly managed 

 that they grow only one-third the amount of timber that is being removed, 

 when under proper management their growth could be twice doubled; it 

 would not tolerate the spectacle which the last half century has witnessed, of 

 the theft of millions of acres of valuable government timberland. 



