Larch Timber on the Edge of a Clearing 



Plenty of constitutional authority was 

 found for the Louisiana purchase and 

 for the Gadsden purchase. Nobody 

 questions the constitutional right of the 

 United States to buy land for fortifica- 

 tions, for custom houses, for post- 

 offices, or for navy yards. 



N'nbmly questions the constitutional- 

 ity of national enterprises, even of a 

 national loan of millions of dollars for 

 the promotion of inland waterways for 

 the middle West, or for national irri- 

 gation enterprises for the fa- West. 

 70 



Nobody questions the constitutional- 

 ity of spending the national revenues 

 for the maintenance of forest reserves 

 in the West, in the benefit of which the 

 East does not participate. If it is con- 

 stitutional to maintain forest reserves 

 for the Pacific slope, it is hard to see 

 by what process of .reasoning it becomes 

 unconstitutional to acquire forest re- 

 serves for the Atlantic slope. 



Finally, driven from these two un- 

 tenable positions, the opponents of Ap- 

 palachian forest reserves have at last 

 taken up a third argument: 



