AMERICAN FORESTRY 



663 



POLITICS AS AN AID TO FORESTRY 



promises to provide much needed lumber 

 at reasonable prices in the future. Pennsyl- 

 vania makes it a practical reality through 

 federal aid. The interest of its congress- 

 men in the patent nostrums of legislation is 

 merely in their value for trading purposes. 

 What wise man would not trade a vote for 

 the Norris bill for one favoring purchase 

 of 1,000,000 acres of land for reforestation 

 in his home district? 

 Why cannot the agrarian bloc in congress 



THIS IS THE WAY 



Sof^'i OrOun H\SH\ij^-ys Loo-*. 



a national forest policy. This is from an 

 editorial on "Peoria and Her Trees": 



Peoria Transcript : To the assistance of 

 the interested citizens comes the American 

 Forestry Association, realizing that its own 

 work, which is much larger and farther 

 reaching, can be better served when it has 

 made the mass of the citizenship more in- 

 telligent on the whole question of trees. 

 Business men of this country are paying 

 millions of dollars a year in freight bills 



because the center of the 

 lumber industry is getting 

 farther and farther away 

 from the points of greatest 

 consumption, the nation's 

 factory centers. We must 

 have a national forest poli- 

 cy that will put the idle 

 acres in the middle west 

 and in the east to work 

 growing trees. In consider- 

 ing a national policy we 

 must consider a disease. 

 That disease is forest de- 

 vastation, the American 

 Forestry Association points 

 out. Its effect is a slow sap- 

 ping of national strength 

 through the steady exhaus- 



when one of the country's greatest needs 

 is to bring them further down. And that 

 is not the only objection. Charles Lathrop 

 Pack, of Lakewood, President of the Amer- 

 ican Forestry Association, makes the point 

 that such a tax would be in direct conflict 

 with a sound national forest policy. A 

 tariff on lumber, he tells us, would put a 

 premium upon every standing tree in this 

 country. The force of that is beyond ques- 

 tion. It will be nothing short of a form of 

 economic suicide for the United States to 

 make it more difficult for us to get a sup- 

 ply of a necessary product from foreign 

 countries when our own supply is threat- 

 ened with destruction. 



Albany Knickerbocker Press: Forest 

 devastation has evidently reached the point 

 where it is producing despairing cries and 

 some ineffective legislation ; it has become 

 an equally national and state issue. 



Sault Ste. Marie News : "Idle land in 

 this country must be put to work growing 

 timber and that at once, for a crisis nears 

 and when that crisis comes it will be the 

 public as usual that pays the bill." 



Mr. Pack speaks truly. The public is 

 vitally interested. The criminal waste of 



THE SPENDTHRIFT 



Gibbs In the 



do as much for the middle west? Wiscon- 

 sin has large tracts of land in crying need of 

 similar reforestation, and worthless for any 

 other purpose. Illinois and the entire Mis- 

 sissippi valley is in need of improved water- 

 ways. At least sixteen states of the middle 

 west are asking for congressional approval 

 of the St. Lawrence seaway. Many states 

 and thousands of manufacturers want the 

 elimination of the "Pittsburgh plus" system 

 for fixing prices on steel products. There is 

 plenty of practical work for the agrarians 

 in congress. If the Pennsylvanians can get 

 practical results in congress why cannot 

 the middle westerners? 



These are but examples of the way the 

 newspapers of the country are keeping the 

 value of forest products and the necessity 

 of increasing the supply of those products 

 before their readers. The Peoria Trans- 

 script points to the need of educating the 

 public to the value of trees that the public 

 may get an idea of the bigger proposition 



Baltimore Evening Sun. 



tion of the national 

 timber supply. The 

 effect will become fa- 

 tal when, through the 

 shortage and high cost 

 of timber, the United 

 States is reduced to 

 the level of western , 

 Europe, when wood is 

 priced as an imported 

 luxury, when not only 

 manufactures and 

 trade are handicapped 

 by lack of it but the 

 comfort of our own 

 people and the effi- 

 ciency of our agricul- 

 ture are straitened 

 by its scarcity. 



Newark Ledger : 

 A tariff on lumber 

 would send building 

 costs up at a time 



Brewerton In the Atlanta Journal. 



