iS99- AMERICAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION. 273 



square miles which should never have ceased to be productive, and which must now 

 lie fallow for many decades before they can be counted again among the wealth-making 

 assets of the nation. It is not greatly to the interest of any man to protect such 

 wastes, and so fire runs over them year after year, and their possible utility recedes 

 further and further into the future." 



This instance of the destructive agencies which are constantly reducing the area of 

 productive forests is but a single example chosen from verv many because it is less 

 widely known. Forest fires, sheep grazing without proper safeguards, and the lack of 

 a general knowledge as to what is possible in forestry are among the other great influ- 

 ences at work for harm. It is only of recent years that the conservative forces have 

 begun to make themselves felt, and even yet they are by no means up to the level of 

 their task, albeit steadily gaining. The conflict against the forces of forest destruction, 

 with its enormous attendant evil to the nation, as opposed to conservative forestry, with 

 the security it brings is worthy of the best interest and effort of every patriotic citizen. 

 For many years a small body of earnest men has been calling public attention to the 

 urgent need of action for the preservation of forests in this country, until at last they 

 have convinced the people at large that something needs to be done. At first there was 

 a general impulse to ridicule the warnings and appeals of the American Forestry Asso- 

 ciation, to which in the end nearly all of these men came to belong. There was a rea- 

 son for this state of affairs, for at first much that was written and said by over-enthus- 

 iastic friends of forestry was less practical and less directly applicable to the American 

 forest problem than it should have been. But this tendency gradually disappeared be- 

 fore a better understanding of the problem by the friends of forestry, and a truer con- 

 ception of the real purpose of the forest reformers by the lumbermen and the general 

 public. 



At present there is scarcely an intelligent American who is not in accord with the 

 aims of the American Forestry Association. The time has evidently come when this 

 Association, strengthened by the approbation of its objects now practically universal 

 among our people, is about to make its beneficent influence much more widely and 

 practically effective than ever before. Indeed all the agencies at work for the perpetu- 

 ation of our forests are taking on new vigor, forest schools are springing up here and 

 there, young men in numbers are turning their eyes toward forestry as a profession, and 

 the general desire of the people, expressed through their representatives in Congress, is 

 giving greater efficiency, year by year, to the work of forest education and right forest 

 management on the ground. Among the forces on the side of progress the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture has long held, and still maintains, an honorable place. 



Protection, chiefly against winds, floods, and drought, and the continuous production 

 of wood, are the prime objects of forestry. To review in detail what forestry means 

 to the United States would be to discuss the value to the nation of practically all its in- 

 dustries, for practically all of them use wood, and the comfort and prosperity of practi- 

 cally all its people, for we all use wood in ways we could very ill afford to spare. 

 In addition the lumber, tanning, and wood-working industries, with their enormous 

 annual output, would have to be specially considered. Forestry means the preserva- 

 tion and perpetuation of all these, just as continued forest destruction means their in- 

 jury or their complete decay. But my limits will not permit me to dwell upon this 

 phase of the subject. I pass now to a sphere of forest influence with which, as a 

 farmer, I have had special opportunity to become acquainted. It may serve as an ex- 

 ample of how closely forestry may be related to the men of a widely separate calling. 

 The interest of the farmer in forestry is a vital one, and by no means confined to the 

 effect of great forest masses on the climate or on the distribution of the rainfall. Such 

 bodies of forest usually lie apart from the chief farming regions, and their influence, 

 however great it may be, and however generally it may be acknowledged, is tar less 

 tangible and convincing to the farmer than the things he can see and handle on his own 



