WHAT IS FORESTRY ALL ABOUT? 



BY THE OBSERVANT STENOGRAPHER 



AS an innocent bystander I'm curious to know what all 

 this forestry talk is about. Am I going to get hurt, 

 and if so how and why? Must I take steps to protect 

 myself, or will I be saved by grace of the national forest 

 policy I hear talked about so much, with so little agree- 

 ment as to what it should be. 



Why is forestry anything to nie anyway? As a citi- 

 zeness with a vote, I try to be interested in good govern- 

 ment and public welfare, but I live in an apartment house 

 in concrete-stone-brick and steel-ribbed New York, where 

 wood is apparently not needed nor used. Yet I'm told that 

 millions and millions of feet of lumber are used right here 

 in the big city and that wood is indispensable to our civ- 

 ilization, with no adequate future supply in sight. I've 

 usually sat in wooden chairs and prefer wooden tables to 

 the marble slabs at Childs, but why should I have to go 

 out and rustle lumber or grow a tree to get them any 

 more than I have to raise a sheep or plant an acre of 

 cotton to get a new suit ? 



In the office where my working hours are spent, the 

 foresters and lumbermen who frequent it are continually 

 talking about the timber supply and saving the forests. 

 At times they get real excited and seem to be trying to 

 save the country from something, and when it comes to 

 that I think we all ought to help. They talk about a 

 Snell Bill and a Capper Bill, but they don't mean much 

 to me, except numerous trips to Washington for some- 

 body and I've never even been there and hearings and 

 conferences and a general haze. There are a lot of other 

 things which seem much more pressing and important 

 to me, such as helping the poor babies on the East Side, 

 or doing something with or for the undigested foreigners 

 to make them good Americans instead of half-baked 

 Bolsheviki who won't even try to learn our language, 

 but come over and board with us, then try to wreck the 

 kitchen. 



Of course, along with other things, we must do some- 

 thing to save the forests. Why, Aunt Jane has the most 

 marvelous picture of a big tree in her front room. I'm 

 sure it must be a redwood, because that's the only big 

 tree I've ever heard of. And everybody says we oughtn't 

 to cut any timber because if we do the whole country will 

 look as flat and treeless as Broadway. A very practical 

 sort of man, I think he owns a mill, asked me what we 

 would do for lumber if we didn't cut down any more 

 trees, when I told him about the picture and made the 

 remark that "We must do something to save the forests," 

 but I didn't even answer him, because he's probably one 

 of those people who like to pick an argument. 



With all this in mind, and thinking maybe I'm behind 

 the times, I sometimes ask my friends, or people I meet 

 in Jersey which you know is one of the places where 

 New York sleeps what they think of the Snell Bill, 

 and if they agree that a yield tax instead of the general 

 property tax would be better for the forests. Well, you 



should see them look at me. They don't say I should be 

 committed to Mattewan, but I know they think it. 



Then when I tell them we need a forest policy to pro- 

 vide wood for our children and everybody's children 

 for generations hence, with some plan of paying for it 

 so it won't cost anything, they ask what for will we need 

 this wood, and isn't Jersey just covered with trees ? Why 

 on that picnic in the Jones' flivver Labor Day we had 

 lunch under a clump of the finest scrub pine you ever 

 saw, with lots of limbs down to just over our heads, so 

 we didn't get wet in the shower and everything, and last 

 summer, coming back from the shore one night we saw 

 a beautiful fire running through the woods along the rail- 

 road. We should worry but its about father's income 

 tax, and how to make last year's hat finish out the season. 



So I wonder where is all the public sentiment the talk 

 in the office made me expect to find. You would think 

 from some of the remarks that forestry was the main 

 thing talked about in the subway and on the Avenue, but 

 I seem to have missed it. If people go home nights full 

 of apprehension as to where their next board or spruce 

 newspaper is coming from, they hide it mighty well. It 

 certainly shows the wonderful control the American peo- 

 ple have over themselves. 



If it is all so important, one would think that each for- 

 estry enthusiast would tell his neighbors about it, and 

 they would tell their neighbors, and soon everybody 

 would be thinking and talking about the need of forest 

 conservation and perhaps do something about it. This 

 is what they should do if the subject is so big and ur- 

 gent, and it must be vital to the country or to some one, 

 and perhaps to me, or the handful of good men and 

 and true would not be trying so hard to get a national 

 awakening. 



I've watched, too, in the papers and magazines for 

 articles about it, and from the occasional things I've seen, 

 the conclusion is that the lumber barons (in bold faced 

 type with a spiked tail) are making a wanton, wilful 

 waste of our beautiful forests, and for no purpose other 

 than to see how much damage they can do while working 

 for selfish, greedy gain. One would conclude from car- 

 toons I've seen that you could always tell a lumberman 

 by his loud checkered suit, big black cigar, and nine carat 

 diamond stick pin, like they tell me barkeeps used to wear ; 

 yet the lumbermen I see in the office don't look like that, 

 and from what I hear them say they are cutting lumber 

 because people want to buy it (sometimes) to build homes 

 with, and they are quite as anxious to make their timber 

 go as far and last as long as those who do not own it. 

 And I know, too, they have their troubles. 



Since I'm trying to find out why I, as a personal mat- 

 ter, should get excited about a forest policy for U. S. A., 

 I've also asked a lot of questions of the foresters who help 



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