The Twenty ^ninth Annual Meeting of the 

 American Forestry Association 



THE twenty-ninth annual meeting 

 of the American Forestry Asso- 

 ciation was held on Tuesday and 

 Wednesday, the i8th and igth of Jan- 

 uary, at the New Willard Hotel, Wash- 

 ington, D. C. 



The Board of Directors met in the 

 morning of the i8th and a joint meeting 

 of the members of the Advisory Board 

 and the directors was held in the after- 

 noon. At these meetings, in addition to 

 the routine business, projects for the 

 work of the association during the com- 

 ing year were discussed at considerable 

 length and some plans were developed 

 of which announcement was made at 

 the sessions of the association later. 

 These plans are also set forth in the 

 pages of AMERICAN FORESTRY. 



THE ANNUAL DINNER 



The crowning event of the meeting 

 was the dinner at the New Willard, 

 Tuesday evening. About one hundred 

 were present and the speaking was of 

 the highest order. This is the first 

 dinner that the association has held for 

 many years, and it was so much en- 

 joyed that it will probably become an 

 annual institution. 



The annual address of President 

 Guild was delivered at this time. It is 

 printed elsewhere in this magazine. 



The next speaker was the Hon. Reed 

 Smoot, Senator from Utah. The sena- 

 tor's earnest and forceful address was 

 listened to with the closest attention and 

 interest. Of the proposed Appalachian 

 National Forest, he said : 



I believe in the Appalachian forest and 

 have voted for it every chance that 1 have 

 had. I believe in it so strongly that no tech- 

 nical point ever raised against it will ever 

 have any influence upon my thought. 



Continuing, he said : 



There are two sides to the question of Na- 

 tional Forests in the states that have already 

 or that do not now possess great areas of 



land in the public domain. Many of the 

 western people feel that they should be 

 entitled to the benefit of those lands in the 

 public domain, the same as many of the 

 middle western states and others have in 

 the past been benefited by the sale, or vir- 

 tually the homesteading, and our different 

 land laws that applied to them. As far as I 

 am concerned, I wish to say that I approve 

 of the administration of our land laws in 

 such a way that every acre of the public 

 lands shall be disposed of to the best ad- 

 vantage, not only of the people within the 

 state, but of all the people in the Nation. 



Adverting to the agitation over the 

 high prices of the necessities of life, he 

 said : 



Statesmen do not agree upon the reason 

 why. From all sections of the country we 

 have reasons given, but hardly two of them 

 agree; and I thought to myself that unless 

 this great system of maintaining our forests 

 is maintained most rigidly, many of us here 

 tonight will live to see the day when every 

 soul in this country will wonder how it was 

 that the statesmen of this day did not take 

 better care of the natural resources of this 

 country. We are excited today over the 

 price of potatoes, of beef, and of the break- 

 fast table, but a quarter of a century from 

 now every citizen of this Nation will be 

 excited over the price of the blessings that 

 God intended should be for all time, and 

 that He bestowed as natural resources for 

 the benefit of all the people. 



The speaker referred to his experi- 

 ence a year ago in studying the forest 

 methods of Europe, and especially those 

 of the great municipal forest of Zurich, 

 the Sihlwald. He described the care 

 that is there given to the trees and to 

 the recording of their individual history. 

 The German methods of close, scientific 

 study were also referred to. He said : 



I have heard men upon the floor of the 

 Senate say that it was not trees but men 

 that they wanted. They forget to read his- 

 tory aright. A treeless country is no place 

 for man, and the history of every country 

 upon the globe proves it. 



In closing, he said : 



I hope to have a chance as a western man 

 (or I would rather by far say as an Ameri- 



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