1905 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



457 



stroyed, in many cases needlessly, or 

 at best only made necessary by reason 

 of the operations being pushed up the 

 steep slopes, originally regarded as too 

 inaccessible and costly to log over. In 

 this way nearly all of the old virgin 

 forest in the mountains has already 

 disappeared, and the logging is being 

 pushed both winter and summer to the 

 fitter end, which is well within sight. 



As the commercial timbers of to-day 

 are rapidly being exhausted, trees 

 heretofore regarded as worthless, are 

 gradually coming into use. The For- 

 est Service of the United States De- 

 partment of Agriculture is experiment- 

 ing with and testing many woods 

 formerly passed by as useless. Until 

 now, except where the hardwoods 

 were slashed out and left to rot to 

 facilitate the removal of the softwoods, 

 the White Mountain slopes have been 

 protected by a fair stand of these al- 

 most worthless kinds. If they become 

 marketable, and it seems quite prob- 

 able that they shortly will, then woe 

 tetide the mountains. 



The people of New England as a 

 whole believe that timber was given 

 us to use. Indeed, lumbering is one 

 of the great industries of the region, 

 and the people naturally desire it to 

 continue as one of the sources of gen- 

 eral wealth. Under the methods at 

 present in vogue in those mountain 

 forests, the industry must be perman- 

 ently injured, and the lumbermen as- 

 sert that they cannot afford to do busi- 

 ness on any modified basis. It is prob- 

 ably impracticable to log the steeper 

 slopes, which chiefly lie on the higher 

 altitudes, except on the clean-cut plan. 

 To cull the trees would not in the 

 least safeguard the forest, since those 

 left would almost certainly be wind- 

 thrown the first winter. So off comes 

 the forest cover to the last stick and 

 eventually down comes the scanty soil 

 to the last particle under the scouring 

 rain and melting snow. The trash in- 

 frequently gets fired by carelessness or 

 malice and the remaining timber is 

 menaced, the remaining soil wholly 



burned away, and desolation is com- 

 plete. 



Just how great is the effect of all 

 this upon the water powers deriving 

 their sources in those mountains can- 

 not be set forth to-day in cold figures. 

 The users of the power in many places 

 state that they have for some time been 

 able to note the changes in power 

 from season to season, and cite the 

 more frequent and more damaging 

 freshets, and the more protracted 

 droughts of recent years. 



New England feels that those moun- 

 tain forests should be protected so that 

 they may be lumbered in perpetuity so 

 far as is consistent with other eco- 

 nomic interests. The present owners 

 of those tracts cannot do this with 

 justice to themselves, and after much 

 mature consideration of ways and 

 means, it has come to be the belief, not 

 alone of the people of the section in- 

 volved, but of expert advisers called in 

 from other parts of the country, and 

 of many men of sound judgment also 

 resident elsewhere, that the only solu- 

 tion of the problem is for the nation 

 to establish there a federal forest re- 

 serve. 



Such an achievement would mean 

 much to the prosperity of New Eng- 

 land, and therefore to the nation, and 

 it would be but a slight tax upon the 

 country to bring it to pass. Accepting 

 the figures of the federal Forest Ser- 

 vice, based on a careful examination 

 of the whole White Mountain terri- 

 tory by the government foresters a 

 year ago, the area of the mountain 

 country is only about 812,000 acres. 

 The total area of all the federal forest 

 reserves at the present time, exclusive 

 of Alaska and Porto Rico, is about 

 91,000,000 acres. These reserves, 92 

 in number, are situated in the west, in 

 Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, 

 Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, 

 Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, 

 Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. 

 New England asks that a compara- 

 tively small area be set aside through 

 federal purchase, and added to the 

 nation's forest domain, an area equal 



