FUTURE OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER 



The Effedt that Destruction of Forests 

 will have Upon its Headwaters 



BY 



CHARLES CRISTADORO 



"T 1 HE forests have been looked upon 

 by the settler both as an enemy 

 and a friend. Unless the land was 

 cleared of trees, no crops could be 

 raised and so with ax and saw he 

 felled them. Yet they gave him the 

 lumber for his house and kept his fire- * 

 side alight and warm during the long 

 winter days and nights. So fared the 

 giant black walnuts of Indiana in the 

 early days when the massive logs were 

 split and hewed into fence rails, those 

 remaining in excess of the winter's 

 need for fuel piled high afield and 

 burned, as one would to-day, in clear- 

 ing a field of so much brush. 



The great Michigan forests of white 

 pine, that nodded to the summer's 

 breeze and swayed before the winter's 

 blasts, appeared not many years ago as 

 inexhaustible and limitless, yet they in 

 time disappeared and vanished as 

 snow upon the yet warm earth, before 

 the ax and saw of the settler and lum- 

 berman. The extravagances of the 

 early lumberman would make the lum- 

 ber operators of the present day bank- 

 rupt were they to follow them. 



As the millions of buffalo disap- 

 peared from the face of the earth so 

 have gone the forests of white pine 

 that stood in a continuous, unbroken 

 chain for hundreds of miles. 



The forests were made for man to 

 use, says the practical lumberman. 

 'Tis true but only in a measure. 

 They were made for man to use and 

 for the use of man. So were the rivers. 

 The water sources, trace them as you 

 may, will be found in the forest. There 

 the spring gives forth its swelling flow 

 that makes the brook, that makes the 

 stream and finally the river as it flows 



toward and empties itself into the 

 ocean. 



Remove the water protecting trees 

 and you interfere with the supply that 

 the springs give forth. In other words, 

 history the world around, reveals the 

 fact that with the timber removed 

 from a river's headwaters, so has the 

 death knell of the river been sounded. 

 Examples of this kind can be shown 

 in all countries. 



We must have water, whether it 

 comes from subterranean or surface 

 rivers or flowing springs and rippling 

 brooks; it matters not, water we must 

 have, without it we can not live. To 

 secure this commodity of nature, the 

 great cities spend millions of dollars 

 to follow it to its source, store and 

 lead it to the cities for consumption. 

 The ancient Romans left us a lesson in 

 aqueducts that has been a speaking 

 example. 



With the destruction of the timber 

 along the water courses, floods and 

 drouths have followed. Many locali- 

 ties once blessed with abundant flow- 

 ing water are to-day, at times, through 

 drouth, absolutely deprived of it, be- 

 cause of the denudation of the timber 

 on the sources of the river. Each 

 State has suffered from the encroach- 

 ment upon its lumber forests and, in 

 some cases, before it was too late, the 

 legislature has stepped in to save the 

 timber. 



When Michigan was being rapidly 

 divested of her great white pine for- 

 ests, Wisconsin was being entered by 

 the lumbermen as a fresh field for lum- 

 ber exploitation. Minnesota's pine 

 giants were yet untouched. But the 

 day came when the lumbermen cleared 



