EDITORIAL 



747 



I 



THE LIMITING 

 FACTOR 



forty million acres of treeless barrens and here and there 

 a small balance of old virgin forests. 



The lumber industry now 

 is nearly gone and on the de- 

 pleted remains of that original 

 forest capital the lake States 

 are seeking to build a great national playground. The 

 time has come for them to consider what has happened 

 in the past in terms of what may hapijen in the future. 

 The forest is their limiting factor. Sooner or later, 

 they must face the fact that their depleted forest capital 

 still is shrinking and the foundation gradually is slipping 

 from under the rising temple of their greater outdoors. 



What is being done to 

 check the forest loss ? In 

 each of the three States, 

 forest protection and forest 

 reconstruction has been booted about politically for years, 

 choked here, throttled there and fanned alive when neces- 

 sity arose. As a result they trail far behind other public 

 work. Fires the curse of the north country continue 

 to consume thousands of acres of growing timber, fur- 

 nishing flaring headlines of exaggeration in the news- 

 papers and frightening tourists from the country; lakes 

 continue to be drained, increasing the fires and routing 



STATE 

 APATHY 



THE CURSE OF 

 THE NORTH 



the game ; reforestation proceeds at a slow pace although 

 the success of planting has been repeatedly demonstrated. 



Minnesota, which leads the 

 States in actual forest pro- 

 gress, grudgingly appropriates 

 $125,000 for its Forest De- 

 partment, of which eighty per cent is spent for fire pro- 

 tection, when it should provide a sum three or four times 

 greater. In Wisconsin, forestry is practically at a stand- 

 still. The State is spending $15,000 for fire protection 

 and trusting to luck that it will not awaken some hot, 

 windy summer to a great conflagation and another great 

 blackened blot on its northern landscape. Michigan with 

 less than a hundred thousand dollars has thus far failed 

 to lift the mortgage from its forest land counties. 



Thus inadequate action con- 

 tinues to eat away the forest 

 balance while the States has- 

 ten to capitalize the vanish- 

 ing remains with large programs of road building, game 

 propagation and recreational development. A great in- 

 dustry lumbering rose and thrived in the Lake States 

 and then it collapsed because men had ignored the de- 

 cisive factor the forest in the capital investment with 

 which the industry had been built. 



Are the Lake States going to repeat the mistake ? 



EXPERIENCE AND 

 ITS LESSON 



WHERE EDUCATION 



FOOLISH 

 IDEAS 



Some people still have the 

 idea that foresters want to 

 make every piece of raw land 

 they clap their eyes upon into 

 a forest. A foolish idea, of course, but not uncommon 

 in the land clearing States of Michigan, Minnesota and 

 Wisconsin, where agricultural propagandists have boomed 

 every likely crop but timber the one crop the States are 

 now most in need of. Public understanding of what 

 forestry actually contemplates is surprisingly at loose 

 ends in many minds. There are those who are against 

 forestry because they believe forestry and agriculture are 

 enemies. There are those who still believe that a state 

 or national forest having been set apart, a high fence 

 would be built around it and the public kept out. There 

 are those who are for forestry in principle but who have 

 been led to believe that it is impracticable to fit it into the 

 scheme of progress. And so on. 



The eff'ect is the effect of 



ignorance, reflected in the 

 small amount of progress 

 which these States have made 

 in forestry during the past decade. Agricultural develop- 

 ment has been the cry, but it has been an agricultural 

 program without a timber crop. Propaganda started 

 years ago by conscienceless land speculators whose stock 

 in trade is cheap cut-over lands, has been a large factor 

 in stifling forestry and in confusing the public mind as 

 to its proper place in State development. Fortunately, 

 the States have made much progress in throttling this 

 type of operator, but in advancing the use of land for 



LAKE STATES 

 FORESTRY 



THE MISSING 

 CHOP 



IS NEEDED 



specially adapted crops they have made relatively little 

 progress, so far as land suitable only for growing forests 

 is concerned. 



Both Michigan and Min- 

 nesota give forestry courses 

 at their agricultural colleges 

 and excellent work is being 

 done with the small amount of money provided. But the 

 departments are inadequately supported financially to 

 permit the State wide extension work needed to give the 

 forest its economic place on the land. In Wisconsin, at 

 the State University at Madison, forestry is tucked away 

 in one little course of two lectures twice a week for one 

 semestre. And this is in spite of the fact that, according 

 to the last census, the farm woodlots in Wisconsin, 

 yielded $16,500,000 worth of forest products in 1919, a 

 crop value exceeding only by that of corn, oats, hay and 

 clover, and potatoes and that on Wisconsin farms timber 

 ranks first in acreage. 



In a recent speech, Secre- 

 tar Wallace of the United 

 States Department of Agri- 

 culture, said: "Timber is a 

 crop ; one of our most important crops. It grows, ripens 

 and becomes ready for the harvest just as other agricul- 

 tural crops. It should be harvested in season and another 

 crop grown for the use of future generations. It must 

 be protected from fire, from plant diseases, from insect 

 pests, just as other agricultural crops are protected. 

 That requires the services of the horticulturist, of the 

 entomologist, of the plant pathologist and of the forest 



GIVE THE FOR- 

 EST ITS PLACE 



