ROCK CREEK PARK WHERE STATESMEN MOTOR 



17 



in quantity and quality, would prove to be a dire depriva- 

 tion. Our forests must be loved, protected, and en- 

 couraged as friends. 



Forests play a leading role in the country's economic 

 life, since from them comes the raw material that sup- 

 ports a large share of its industries. Even a hasty 

 analysis of the available figures brings this fact most 

 forcibly to mind. 



Census data for 1914 show in round numbers 276,000 

 establishments engaged in manufacturing, and of this 

 vast number 52,000, or 19 per cent are establishments 

 depending solely or in) part on the products of the for- 

 est for raw materials used in their varied lines of 

 manufacture. In other words, nearly one-fifth of all the 

 the manufacturing establishments throughout the 

 country use timber in one form or other, and they would 

 be handicapped by decreased supplies and forced to cease 

 working if no wood were obtainable. 



Employment is given by the 276,000 manufacturing 

 establishments to 7,000,000 wage earners. Of this vast 

 army of toilers, who keep the wheels of industry mov- 

 ing, 1,130,000, or 16 per cent earn their wage in the 52,- 

 000 wood-using plants. To a man these wage earners 

 should be interested in the proper use of our forests, for 

 from the annual crops must come the wood which they 

 handle to make their livelihood. 



The manufacturing establishments of the country pay 

 out annually in the aggregate 14% billion dollars foi 

 raw materials, and the part of the wood-using industries 

 in that huge expenditure amounts to more than one bil- 

 lion dollars, or 7 per cent. The value of the products 

 of the 52,000 establishments amounts to nearly 2 l A bil- 

 lion dollars a year, or 10 per cent of the toal value of 



all manufacturers. The value of the products of the 

 wood-using industries is slightly more than doubled by 

 the process of refinement at the hands of the more than 

 a million wage earners. The capital invested in the 

 52,000 plants, totalling 3 billion dollars, is 13 per cent of" 

 the aggregate investment of 22J4 billion dollars in manu- 

 factures. 



These are huge figures and their very magnitude 

 makes them difficult of ready perception. But in no 

 other way, perhaps, can the greatness and wealth rep- 

 resented by the wood-using industries of the country 

 be pointed out. One inhabitant of every 100 forming 

 the 100 million population of the United States is a wage 

 earner whose earnings depend upon the uninterrupted 

 supply of raw material from the forest. And if that 

 wage earner is married and has a couple of children, that 

 many more mouths to feed and bodies to clothe are 

 directly affected by anything that tends to impair our 

 forest resources. 



Only the material side of the forest question has been 

 touched upon here. Nothing has been said about the 

 necessity of our forests for protecting the sources of 

 water supply, for the recreation and health of those who 

 should have the advantage of nature's playgrounds, or 

 for maintaining an equable climate in different regions. 

 These problems are not ethical but practical and urgent- 

 ly require attention. 



From the economic as well as the human standpoint, 

 are not our forests worth protecting? protecting from 

 improper utilization, careless logging, and criminal care- 

 lessness about fire? In the light of the statistics, every 

 citizen should find it to his interest to support a con- 

 structive forestry program. 



ROCK CREEK PARK WHERE STATESMEN MOTOR 



The world's champion park for a motorist is Rock 

 Creek Park, Washington, District of Columbia, the 

 blooming capital of these broad and sovereign United 

 States of America, writes Burt P. Garnett in Motor Life. 



When somebody or other made some sort of a deal with 

 Alexander Hamilton, first secretary of the Treasury, 

 which resulted in the location of the capital on the 

 Potomac River, between the sovereign states of Mary- 

 land and Virginia, that somebody proved he was a lover 

 of nature and a person of unassailable taste in his ap- 

 preciation of rocks and rills and templed hills and trees 

 and birds and flowers. 



Some argumentative person in Denver or Los Angeles 

 or Portland, Oregon, will immediately put in a demand 

 and make an effort to refute the foregoing information. 

 Rocky Mountain folk and the peoples of the Pacific 

 Coast always have had a hopeless sort of feeling about 

 the rest of the country. They know that Estes Park 

 and Lake Tahoe and the Columbia River country are 

 much more beautiful than any other section of the 

 world, but they have practically despaired of ever get- 

 ting the national capital moved from Washington to 

 Denver to Portland or Los Angeles, because the great 



masses of the people wouldn't understand. And it's 

 rather too big to tackle to transport every voter in the 

 country to these various places and show him the over- 

 powering reasons why the capital should be moved. 



Nevertheless, and in the almost certain knowledge that 

 the foregoing statements will be flatly contradicted by 

 loyal native sons of this state or that, Rock Creek Park 

 is our candidate. We cast our vote right now and hereby 

 adopt resolutions to the effect that whereas Congress in 

 its wisdom in the year A. D. 1889 appropriated sums 

 of money to purchase certain wooded area in the valley 

 of Rock Creek to be set aside as a National Zoological 

 Park, and, 



Whereas, in the year A. D. 1880, Congress in its in- 

 creasing wisdom appropriated certain other sums to buy 

 other wooded area adjacent to and adjoining said 

 National Zoological Park for the purpose of a public 

 park, therefore be it resolved. 



That Congress was decidedly hep to what was good 

 for the nation, and, by heck, it deserves the thanks to 

 the folk of this here District of Columbia, the A. A. A. 

 et al. too numerous to mention. 



