THE EVENING SESSION 



THR evening session was taken up 

 almost altogether with an ad- 

 dress by the Hon. J. E. Ransdell, 

 of Louisiana, and an illustrated lecture 

 by Dr. Bailey Willis. Representative 

 kunsdcll's address dealt with the neces- 

 sity for the development, to the fullest 

 possible extent, of the inland river sys- 

 tem of the United States, together with 

 the correlated subject of development 

 of freight traffic routes on the great 



lakes, systtmastic work on the harbor^ 

 of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts; and 

 the speaker, who is President of the 

 National Rivers and Harbors Congress, 

 gave vivid and enlightening statistics 

 showing the vastly decreased cost of 

 heavy freight traffic when our rivers 

 and waterways are developed to their 

 full carrying capacity. Representative 

 Ransdell's address is here presented in 

 full. 



ADDRESS OF HON, J. E, RANSDELL 



I FEEL honored at being invited to ad- 

 dress this great Association, which in 

 my judgment, is engaged in one of the 

 greatest works now confronting the Ameri- 

 can people, to wit, a proper conservation and 

 preservation of our forests, one of the most 

 valuable of our national assets. I wish I 

 were sufficiently familiar with the subject 

 which especially interests you, to speak to 

 you intelligently on it, but I am sorry to 

 say that in my busy Congressional life, de- 

 voting myself, as I have done, almost ex- 

 clusively to the study of waterways, I have 

 not been able to give that careful consid- 

 eration to the study of forestry which its 

 importance demands of any one who at- 

 tempts to speak to a forestry association. 



From my youth I have taken much in- 

 terest in this subject. I observed, when a 

 hoy, on my father's Louisiana plantation, 

 lliat as the lands were cleared, the sloughs, 

 bayous, lakes and lowlands rapidly filled up. 

 Places that I used to wade and fish in as a 

 little boy had ceased to be watercourses 

 when I returned to the farm after receiv 

 ing my education, and as I think about that 

 T am impressed by the fact that as the 

 forests are removed and the lands put under 

 cultivation, a very great change comes over 

 the physical face of the surrounding country. 

 1 infer from that fact in regard to the 

 farms and the surrounding waters that 

 when forests are denuded, even if the 

 lands are not placed in cultivation, there is 

 a very great effect upon the adjacent 

 streams, whether they be the little shallow 

 lakes and sloughs and bayous of my boy- 

 hood days, or the mighty watercourses on 

 which we have palatial steamers floating. T 

 think there is a very intimate relationship 

 lu-t WITH forests and waters, and feeling that, 

 [ am much pleased to receive an invitation 

 76 



to come to-night and speak to you on the 

 subject which I have studied for years, the 

 improvement of our navigable waterways. 

 I wish to say, before taking up the navi- 

 gation end of my discourse, that my own 

 State, Louisiana, is very much interested in 

 your work. Louisiana to-day, I believe, 

 enjoys the unenviable notoriety of being the 

 second lumber producing State in this 

 nation, exceeded only by the State of 

 Washington, if I am correctly informed. 

 I say "unenviable" advisedly, for it is truly 

 a source of sorrow to all patriots to know 

 that that valuable product is being so rapid- 

 ly dissipated. It is only a few years ago 

 that States in the Northwest were pro- 

 ducing more lumber by odds than Louisiana 

 and the Southern States. The scefter has 

 passed from them because of the very rapid 

 manner in which the timber was consumed 

 there, and I assume that in a few years this 

 scepter, this unenviable scepter, will pass 

 from Louisiana. I hope your society may 

 be enabled to persuade the lawmakers of 

 Louisiana to do something that will prevent 

 the rapid denudation of their forests. 1 

 wish to say that within a very few months 

 the Governor of my State, acting under a 

 law passed by the last session of the legis- 

 lature in June of the past year, appointed a 

 conservation committee, and the president 

 of it is a prominent lumberman of my dis- 

 trict, Mr. Henry E. Hartner, a man who 

 has been trying to handle his work in an 

 intelligent manner. I drove for several 

 miles with him through the forests last 

 year and noticed that on nearly every acre 

 of the land two or three seed trees had 

 been left and quite a number of small trees. 

 I saw some lands which had been cut over 

 about fifteen years ago and already there 

 was sufficient growth upon them to make 



