178 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



April 



to find that you understand, as we do, 

 that the lumberman is much nearer the 

 forester and the forester the lumberman 

 than either is to any other class. You 

 are the axe that does the work ; we are 

 the helve that serves to give it direction. 

 If we cannot work with you, who own 

 already more than 50,000 square miles 

 of timber if we cannot work with you 

 in preserving that timber and keeping it 

 productive, then we shall not work effect- 

 ively for the preservation of the forests 

 of the United States. If we cannot work 

 with you, if our position does not com- 

 mend itself to you, and if we cannot 

 have your support, then truly we shall 

 need help. We can attend to the forests 

 of the government or of the states to 

 some extent without your aid, but first 

 or last the great bulk of the forest lands 

 of the United States will pass through 

 the hands of the lumbermen, and upon 

 their attitude will depend the huge in- 

 terests of this country in the protection 

 of its timber supply. 



I have been asked, in addition to these 

 remarks about forestry, to say a word 

 or two concerning forest conditions in 

 the Philippines. I was fortunate enough 

 to make a six weeks' trip through the 

 islands. I found a great area of pro- 

 ductive forests, most of it in admirable 

 condition for lumbering and easily ac- 

 cessible. The demand for lumber in 

 the islands is so great that there is a 

 very large importation from the Pacific 

 Coast, because the Philippine lumber- 

 men are not able to supply it. I found 

 not only timbers of great value for cab- 

 inet wood, but others equally valuable 

 for construction purposes, including 

 some of the best ship-building timbers 

 in the world. There is Narra, which 

 is like Mahogany, and Ebony and Cam- 

 agon, which correspond with Lignum 

 Vitae, and another like Rosewood, and 

 so on. A very large proportion of these 

 woods sink in the water when they are 

 green, so that a regular method of log- 

 ging is to drag these logs down into the 

 sea at low tide and let them lie there 

 until the lighter can come along and 

 pick them up. 



There will be a very great opportu- 

 nity for lumbering in the islands as 

 soon as the conditions of the country 

 will permit it. At present the millmen 

 who are there are unable to get as much 

 timber as the supply demands, partly 

 because of the death of the water buf- 

 falo, the only draft animal for logging, 

 90 per cent of which are dead of the 

 rinderpest. When these conditions 

 shall be remedied and the water buffalo- 

 are replaced ; when the Filipinos have 

 learned to work, as they will readily 

 learn under the instruction of the Amer- 

 icans, there is going to be an enormous 

 expansion of the lumber trade in the 

 islands, and, in my judgment, it is go- 

 ing to coincide with the introduction of 

 wire-rope machinery. 



All the cutting of timber that goes 

 on in the Philippine government forests 

 is carried out under the regulations of 

 the insular Bureau of Forestry, and 

 nearly all the forest there belongs to 

 the government. We are going to have 

 in the islands one of the most produc- 

 tive forest regions of the globe, both 

 for our own markets and for all the 

 markets of the east, all of it conserved 

 by practical forestry. It is the finest 

 opportunity for practical forestry that 

 I have ever had anything to do with. 



As a man sees what the Americans 

 are doing out there in the islands, he 

 cannot help being prouder and prouder 

 of being an American, of belonging to 

 a nation that is dealing with a problem 

 so enormous and difficult in so thor- 

 oughly fine a way. I have tramped 

 through the woods out there with the 

 soldiers ; I have followed the trails 

 they had to travel ; have been bitten by 

 the same leeches ; have slept on the 

 same ground, eaten the same "grub," 

 and know something of the hardships 

 they have had to endure without a 

 whimper, and I have come back with 

 the perfectly definite conviction that 

 the thing to be wondered at is not that 

 an occasional soldier went wrong and 

 committed an act of cruelty, but that 

 so little of it was done under so great 

 provocation. 



