18 Canadian Forestry Journal. 



lands in certain regions in the United States had passed under 

 private ownership. You have been wise enough to keep the title 

 in the State, and your opportunity of making forest preserves 

 are better than ours have been hitherto. I might cite the 

 instance of the State of New York, which you Mr. Chairman, 

 have mentioned in order to point this moral. A former 

 Governor of New York, Mr. Seymour, who was in office at the 

 timel'when the forest lands of the Adirondacks had small value, 

 looked far ahead and suggested that these lands should be re- 

 served for State forests. He was laughed at, and nothing was 

 done about it; the State parted with its title for a mere pittance. 

 Since that time the legislative descendants of the men who refused 

 to listen to Governor Seymour have paid — I do not know the 

 exact sum, but it is not less that $3,000,000 or $4,000,000 to buy 

 back the lands that might have been kept in full public owner- 

 ship without any expense whatever (loud applause). And 

 we in the United States will have to spend millions upon 

 millions — we may begin with this session of Congress ; I hope 

 so — merely to buy back the land that we ought to have 

 kept when we had the chance and the keeping of which 

 would have involved no public expenoC. We are setting 

 aside forest reserves and treating them as forest reserves as 

 separate from the rest of the public lands. In carrying out this 

 policy these forest reserves have been taken from the manage- 

 ment of the General Land Office, which look after the public 

 lands generally, but which is mainly a department to dispose 

 of public lands, and put in the charge of the department of 

 agriculture, to be used for purposes of production. We are 

 using every possible resource of this forest reserve, timber, water, 

 grass, mines and every other. Nothing in the forest reserve 

 is exempted from use, but nothing is open to use that will keep 

 the reserve from being permanent with the exception of the 

 mines. We are going to see to it that those forest reserves 

 continue not only through the years but through the centuries 

 to make their contribution to the wealth of the country. And 

 that is a perfectly feasible and practical thing to do. 



Then, we are cooperating in the closest and most cordial 

 way possible with the men who use the forest reserves. Forestry 

 is a matter that, as a permanent policy can only rest on good 

 will. One man can set more fires, if he chooses his time rightly, 

 than ten times the number of men in this room can put out. 

 We see clearly that we can protect our forests, protect our re- 

 serves, only if we have the good will of the people who live in 

 the neighbourhood; and we are doing our best to secure that 

 good will by treating the people fairly, and by making them 

 pay the market price for whatever we give them. That does 

 not seem, perhaps, to be the best way to secure the good will 

 of these users ; but we find that the men who use the reserves be- 



