1903 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



177 



ance with a printed offer we have made. 

 You would want to know what timber 

 there is now on your land, what your 

 land will produce under certain definite 

 methods of management, what those 

 methods are, and whether the result at 

 the end of a given number of years 

 will pay taxes and interest and a profit 

 on the investment. All these things 

 the Bureau would help you to ascertain. 

 I^et us take a single acre of spruce as 

 an illustration. We should find out 

 how many 5-inch spruce, how many 

 6-inch, how many 7, 8, and so on up, 

 there are on this acre. We should find 

 that the average spruce tree grows say 

 an inch in diameter in seven years. 

 We might then decide to recommend 

 to you to cut all trees n inches and 

 over in diameter. You would then get, 

 say 2,500 feet to the acre. You will 

 have a definite number of 8, 9, and 10- 

 inch trees left. In seven years these 

 trees will have grown one inch ; in 

 twenty-one years, an 8-inch tree will 

 have grown to 1 1 inches. You know 

 how many trees there are of each size, 

 how many are likely to die, and approxi- 

 mately what the price of spruce is 

 going to be at that time, figuring on 

 the present basis. Then you have the 

 proposition reduced to a simple mathe- 

 matical calculation. Lumbermen in the 

 Adirondacks find that it pays. There 

 you have the essence of the whole thing. 



As I said, this is a business matter. 

 The time has come when it is worth 

 your while to look into it, for many of 

 the great lumber concerns throughout 

 the United States are taking up forestry. 



The point I want to make is that this 

 is a simple, common-sense proposition 

 which must rest for its acceptance upon 

 your business sense. You know far 

 better than I do the conditions of the 

 forests of the country as to supply and 

 demand. The White Pine industry in 

 the Northwestern States reached its 

 culmination about 1890, and has been 

 sliding down hill ever since, and lumber- 

 men have been moving to the West and 

 South. There has been a very great 

 stimulus to the production of southern 

 pine. In the extreme West the produc- 

 tion has often been equaled by the waste 

 from fire. It has been estimated that 



in western Washington 20 per cent of 

 the original stand has been cut and 22 

 per cent, or 46,000,000,000 feet, has 

 been burned a dead loss absolutely to 

 everybody. The introduction of prac- 

 tical forestry means the use of timber 

 instead of its destruction by fire or by 

 unintelligent lumbering. 



I have no interest whatever in the 

 protection of the forest per se. Unless 

 it serves some useful purpose, a stand- 

 ing forest appeals to me not at all (ex- 

 cept from the merely aesthetic side) . I 

 want it distinctly understood that forest 

 protection is to the forester a means, not 

 an end, as the President said so well in 

 his message of 1901. If a forest is of 

 no use, then it is useless. Forest pres- 

 ervation is not a fad, but a tool. The 

 lumber industry holds a vast place in 

 the upbuilding of our country, and if it 

 has done harm in one direction, it has 

 done enormous good in another ; but we 

 are reaching a point now where progress 

 in production can no longer be fed for 

 any length of time by the use of new 

 species as the substitutes for the old, as 

 the Hemlock succeeded White Pine in 

 Pennsylvania. We have now to look 

 squarely in the face the question whether 

 or not the lumber industry is to be pre- 

 served. I need not tell a gathering 

 such as this how vital to the interests 

 of the country a timber supply is. We 

 know something from practical experi- 

 ence what a coal famine is. We shall 

 not learn for many years what a wood 

 famine is, but we are enormously over- 

 cutting the production of our forests. 

 East of the Mississippi we have just 

 about half of the area of timber lands 

 that we had when the country was 

 settled. 



The only thing which can be relied 

 upon to protect your industry and the 

 enormous interests which depend upon 

 it is forestry. We must consider from 

 now on that the forest is a crop ; that 

 methods of renewing it are just as vital 

 to you, who are interested in cutting it 

 down, as to those who are interested in 

 building it up. You have got to elimi- 

 nate, as we foresters have already elimi- 

 nated, the differences in the points of 

 view between lumbermen and foresters. 

 It is one of the great delights of my work 



J 



