274 THE FORESTER. December, 



farm. I have no desire to belittle the vast utility of mountain forests, or to slight what 

 may fairly be called the appalling need of conservative forest management throughout 

 all the great forest areas of the country. These are matters of the first importance to 

 the prosperity and happiness of us all, and it would be difficult to give them undue 

 weight in any consideration of the great resources of the United States. Tn this paper, 

 however, I must take them for granted and go on to consider briefly what interest the 

 farmer has in forestry on his own farm. 



There being, according to the census of 1S90, more than 200,000,000 acres of forest 

 in farms, it appears at once that this is, in the aggregate, a very great question for the 

 farmers in wooded regions. As we shall see, it is no less important for the farmer 

 living where all the trees have been planted by the hand of man. 



A farmer who has a woodlot on his farm is interested in it in three ways. If he 

 lives in a treeless country the protection of his house, his stock, and his growing crops 

 against freezing and drying winds is of the very first consequence. It may be objected 

 that this matter of windbreaks and shelterbelts is outside the domain of forestry, but 

 the objection is not well taken. Forestry deals with forest trees in their relation to the 

 material welfare of the human race. Whether the service they yield to man is rendered 

 in fuel, timber, or protection does not affect the definition. Nor is it material whether 

 the protection given is against floods, snowslides, blizzards, or drying winds. All these 

 are within the province of forestry. 



The farmer in a treeless region is deeply concerned, with the presence or absence of 

 windbnikes and shelterbelts on his farm, not only because of the essential necessity of 

 the protection they afford, but for another and most practical reason as well. It has 

 been ascertained by the estimates of competent men on the ground that the average 

 value of a farm, in certain of our treeless States, is actually increased about ten per 

 cent, by the presence of good plantations. 



The farmer, where trees grow implanted, is likewise concerned in the protection 

 which his woodlot gives, when he is fortunate enough to have it rightly placed, but his 

 dependence on shelter is far less than that of the man in the treeless West. . Still it is 

 often enough to make the difference between comfort and discomfort, or sometimes be- 

 tween prosperity and want. 



In the second place the farmer is interested in forestry as a producer of wood. The 

 planted grove or windbreak of the prairie farmer not only supplies him with part or all 

 of his fuel, with fence posts, and with wood for other uses about the farm, just as the 

 woodlot does more abundantly for the farmer of the wooded regions, but it may con- 

 tribute, through the sale of any of these items, ready cash to no inconsiderable amount. 

 On many farms in the East the products of the woodlot, such as ties, posts, and cord- 

 wood, bring in a very large per cent, of the yearly revenue in money. It is by no 

 means uncommon for a farmer, to whom his cultivated fields would give but a bare liv- 

 ing, to be lifted into comparative ease by the produce of his woodlot. For the Eastern 

 farmer it is always harder to get ready cash than to raise produce for the subsistence of 

 himself, his family, and his stock, and it is just here that his woodlot, rightly handled, 

 is often his main reliance. It is hardly too much to say that under intelligent handling 

 it might always be made so. 



In the third place, the farmer is concerned in forestry because he is a purchaser of 

 timber. The price of his agricultural machinery and of nearly all his tools is affected 

 by the progressive destruction of our forests. His house and barn, in the vast majority 

 of cases, are built of purchased timber and roofed with shingles which have cost him 

 money. His produce goes to market in wooden cars hauled over wooden sleepers. His 

 cradle and his coffin are of wood. It behooves him, scarcely less than the lumberman, 

 and far more than many other classes of the community, to see to it that the forests of 

 our country are not destroyed. To that end the American Forestry Association is an 

 instrument sharpened and ready for his use. This Association, if I may be allowed a 



