OUR EASTERN FORESTS 



BY 

 REV. DR. EDWARD EVERITT HALE 



Chaplain of the United States Senate 



A S the first session of the new Con- who saw that assembly or who heard 

 ** gress approaches, the attention the addresses made there, knows now 

 of every part of the country should be that a general national interest has 

 called to the various proposals which been awakened in the preservation of 

 the National Forest Service and the our forests. Railroad men, water-pow- 

 various forestry boards of the several er men, representatives of half a dozen 

 states have prepared. It will be as great industries, met together in the 

 well if every citizen can remember that same great interest, 

 such study and action as are proposed What is especially important to be 

 are exactly what western Asia and remember now, is the condition of for- 

 northern Africa needed when their de- e sts, not in the Rocky Mountain wa- 

 cline began. Because no such ac- tershed, but in that of the Alleghany 

 tion was taken, because the forests of an d the ranges eastward. 

 Asia Minor and of Syria and of north- Nothing shows the generosity of the 

 ern Africa were destroyed, those lands nation more than the magnificent pro- 

 are what they are. President Roose- v j s ion which it has made for what was 

 velt, in his address at Raleigh, N. C., the Louisiana of the French, which is 

 called attention to this failure of those now that half of the United States 

 countries, and he gives also the in- wes t of the Mississippi River. In ev- 

 stance of China, an immense empire e ry state in that region, and in every 

 which owes its present desolate condi- territory, the general government has 

 tion to the destruction of its forests, already established a magnificent for- 

 The nations around the Mediterranean e st reserve in some instances more 

 were the center of the civilization of than one. 



the world. No cities were more pros- Nothing shows the lavishness of our 



perous than theirs, no people were generosity and the indifference of the 



more proud or successful. And now, majority to merely local selfishness 



what were rivers then are but winter more than the f act , which is itself curi- 



torrents, what were cities then are O us, that on the east of the Mississippi, 



straggling villages. to the Atlantic ocean, there is no such 



A generation ago, when the Ameri- reservation. At this moment the gov- 



can Forestry Association was formed, ernment is expending more than $20,- 



Dr. George Bailey Loring, the head of 000,000 for the proper irrigation of 



the Department of Agriculture, said the arid regions of the West. But at 



that he regarded the formation of that this moment the general government 



association as the most important is not expending five cents for the reg- 



movement which the American people ulation of the irrigation of the Old 



had started in those years. Thirty Thirteen States, or of the states born 



years have justified his statements and from them east of the Mississippi 



prophecies. Indeed, the increase of River. 



our dangers has awakened men from Yet the injury inflicted upon com- 



the indifference in this matter which merce, upon travel, upon manufacture, 



marked the middle of the last century, and upon agriculture, by the destruc- 



As the readers of this journal know, tion of the forests of the eastern half 



everyone who joined in the great con- of the continent will be, for a hundred 



ference at Washington last January, years at least, greater than injury to 



