6i8 



CONSERVATION 



My attention has been called by Mr. 

 Smith, chief of the Editorial Division 

 of the Forest Service, to the fact that 

 while the census shows an annual out- 

 put from the logging camps of only 

 about one-half the value of that of the 

 iron mine?, viz. 74,000,000, that this 

 takes no account of the vast amount of 

 timber, not for the general market but 

 for local consumption worth, prob- 

 ably, in the aggregate, at least as much 

 more. Moreover, as we use iron we use 

 it up. So it was once with the 

 forest. Fresh supplies of timber 

 were available only in new terri- 

 tory. First the Northeast, then the 

 Lake states, then the South, were 

 swept clean of any great reserve. 

 Only the Northern Pacific coast was 

 left. Soon this would have been gone 

 under the awful warfare with which 

 these private interests have vandalized 

 the past and jeopardized the future. No 

 one who has read the history of the 

 Forest Service, and, as well, that of the 

 "land-skinner," can hesitate long as to 

 whether "state interference," or laissez- 

 faire (to use the larger meaning of the 

 term) is better politics, and as to 

 whether competitive anarchy or patriotic 

 nationality is the better guiding prin- 

 ciple in public affairs. 



It is pretty certain that, but for a 

 national forest policy, backed up by the 

 Nation, the greed of the land-skinner 

 would soon have laid bare our western 

 states, as it has stripped the eastern 

 and middle states, and deprived the arid 

 region of the West of a stable water- 

 supply. 



Every true American has felt the 

 elemental sorrow of Leatherstocking, 

 driven to the far West because the 

 sound of the \voodsman's ax which had 

 driven him from his forest home, still 

 in the clearings, burt his ears ; and a 



lonely old man with his silent laugh 

 and his silent grief, sorrow-stricken 

 still in the far prairie at the sound of 

 a falling tree. There is real tragedy 

 here. This is a common feeling. But 

 this sentiment has never been organized. 

 There has been a necessity for this, 

 for sentiment still rules the world. A 

 growing national sentiment is behind 

 the whole work of the Forest Service. 



A national sentiment is not a nation- 

 al sentiment alismus. The pioneers of 

 forestry, in creed or deed, have enter- 

 tained no geographic grief that the 

 dryads are dead, or that the wan shapes 

 of the hamadryads are wandering like 

 lost ghosts among the ragged and un- 

 roofed stumps of so many a deserted 

 waste. We entertain a sentiment of 

 patriotism, a religion, for the restora- 

 tion of the beauty, the utility and the 

 dignity of the land. But for the forest, 

 which was the glory of the Nation's 

 youth, what would that land have been 

 to-day? What would it have been to- 

 morrow? Surely another domain. It 

 furnished the fortress to protect the 

 early pioneer from the arrow of the 

 treacherous foe. The life of the Na- 

 tion's youth was nurtured in the forest. 

 And, more or less, in every home on 

 the continent to-day some forest prod- 

 uct furnishes shelter. 



By the substitution of the geograph- 

 ical economist for the land-skinner, the 

 principle of nationalism for a competi- 

 tive anarchy, we can not only produce a 

 supply of timber four times as great as 

 we produce now, and sufficient for our 

 national needs, but we can kill several 

 other birds with the same stone, as it 

 were, for upon this central economy de- 

 pends the usefulness of the streams of 

 the continent for navigation, water- 

 supply, irrigation and power. 



(To be continued} 



