Forest Relations between the East and the West 

 as the East Hopes to See Them 



Address of Henry Sturgis Drinker, LL.D., 



President of Lehigh Unii'crsity and President of the American Forestry Association, on American Forestry Asso- 

 ciation Day at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, October 20, 1915. 



CBERMEN AND FORESTERS OF THE 

 GREAT WEST: We who have come from the 

 East to join you in this conference greatly and 

 deeply appreciate your welcome because we see in it 

 that the American Forestry Association has been taken 

 into fellowship by practical men of the West who know 

 well how forestry organizations can lack in practical 

 utility and therefore not be worth consideration on busy 

 occasions. The compliment is accentuated when the 

 president of the American Forestry Association is asked 

 to preside on a day like this devoted to fundamental in- 

 dustrial conditions. It shows recognition on your part 

 that forestry, on its practical useful side, means forest 

 industry, and that we have mutual recognition of this 

 truth. We of the East do recognize it, and we wish 

 to work with you to make the whole country recognize 

 it, and I am glad that you have given us this chance to 

 learn your views as to what is needed so that we can do 

 our best in this joint national work. 



The American Forestry Association is an organization 

 older and perhaps more influential than you of the Pa- 

 cific Coast fully realize. It led the early forestry move- 

 ment in the country as "The American Forestry Con- 

 gress," organized in 1883, later reorganized in 1890 as 

 "The American Forestry Association." It has about 

 9,000 members. Its magazine has a very large circula- 

 tion compared with that of the ordinary industrial pub- 

 lication. Far more than in most educational or industrial 

 organizations, it includes both the people inside the 

 movement such as lumbermen, foresters and public offi- 

 cials and the outside public which needs education and 

 guidance. Commonly, I think, organized effort represents 

 one class seeking to correct or restrict the other, with 

 the confidence of but one. We, more luckily, embrace 

 both, but this al^o gives us the greater and more difficult 

 responsibility of representing the interests of both. It 

 is not always easy to do this with justice and it is still 

 harder to satisfy both that we are doing so. 



There was a time in America when to the lay mind 

 forestry meant forest preservation only, and I think you 

 will concede that it meant the same to lumbermen. There 

 was little meeting on common ground. It was in those 

 days that the American Forestry Association was born, 

 and for a time it was governed by such an attitude. We 

 can hardly criticise it for this. There was need of forest 

 preservation and there were few to enlist except those 

 whose understanding did not extend beyond the duty of 



1054 



state and government to prevent useless destruction. 

 They knew no way except to denounce and command. 

 Nor did forest industry join them to show a better way. 

 They were sincere but ignorant. Let us be fair, how- 

 ever, and admit that although ignorant they were sin- 

 cere. And this view is still, of course, to some extent 

 held by uninformed emotional people, who know and 

 think little of forest industry, and view the question only 

 from an aesthetic standpoint, the desire to preserve trees 

 for their beauty or poetic association. 



However, as the study of forest conditions progressed, 

 a change took place. Outside of those pioneers, whose 

 viewpoint and activity left a strong imprint on the public 

 mind, grew up an element which was perhaps less altru- 

 istic, less public-spirited in its detachment, but also 

 less fanatical, if we may use so strong a word, not in a 

 critical sense, for the out-and-out reformer must be 

 somewhat of a fanatic to keep up his courage and to be 

 heard. But the new forestry was more practical. It 

 appealed to justice more than to prejudice, to common 

 sense more than to responsibility to posterity. It recog- 

 nized the use of forests more than sentiment and that 

 their use lies in service rather than in being an end in 

 themselves. 



At the same time lumbermen, in trying to preserve and 

 foster their industry, came to see the necessity of pro- 

 tection and conservative methods. Unconsciously at first, 

 both elements arrived by independent thinking at about 

 the same conclusion that practical forestry is forestry 

 tc the extent that pays, or at least is financially per- 

 missible under prevailing social conditions. Lumber pro- 

 ducers called it intelligent timber management, the others 

 interested called it forestry. And soon these naturally 

 sympathetic elements made each other's acquaintance, 

 and began to work together, with names and differences 

 forgotten. That was the birth of real American forestry, 

 the kind that will be as nearly successful as success is 

 attainable. The Western Forestry and Conservation As- 

 sociation stands before the country as one of the first 

 and foremost exponents of this sane modern view. Its 

 alliance of private, State and federal interests in those 

 things that can be done together for mutual and public 

 good has set an example to the United States and Can- 

 ada that is being widely followed. The American For- 

 estry Association cannot work along exactly the same 

 lines, for it mainly represents forest education and moulds 

 opinion, and you represent a membership owning and 



