Canadian Forestry Convention. 19 



gin to have much more respect for the officers who administer 

 them and for the reserves themselves, if we are successful in 

 doing with the reserve what any private owner would do with 

 his own land. (Applause.) We see no reason why all the 

 people as a body, should receive less from their reserves for the 

 privileges which they give in them than would be the case if the 

 whole of it went to a single man. And we are proving success- 

 ful in securing market prices, and, I think, to a very considerable 

 degree, conciliating the people in the neighbourhood. While, a 

 few years ago, there was almost universal opposition to the 

 forest reserves in the West, to-day organized opposition has 

 disappeared and I believe that the policy which once would have 

 been unanimously disapproved would now be almost unanimous- 

 ly supported if it could be put to the vote of the people in the 

 region where our forest reserves lie. 



One thing more: We are making a vigorous attempt to 

 have the reserves handled from the point of view of technical 

 forestry. We regard forestry as a profession, as much as en- 

 gineering, law or medicine, and we are doing our best to see 

 to it that the men who carry on the work of these forestr}-- pre- 

 serves shall be men trained to the service, either in the Govern- 

 ment service or in the forestr)^ schools — professionally trained 

 men with a technical outfit which will entitle them to recogni- 

 tion, on the same plane, for instance, as a highly trained en- 

 gineer. Resting on the foundation of this body of trained men, 

 whose profession is forestry and who propose to do that and 

 nothing else all their lives, we are trying to build up a special 

 force that shall have an esprit de corps, a force continuing year 

 after year, a force that can be sifted and sifted as the years go 

 on, until we shall have the very best collection of individuals 

 that there is anywhere in the Government service. For, it is 

 one happy thing about forestry that you can get a better man to 

 work for less money in the woods than at any other piece of 

 work I know anything about. (Applause and laughter.) 



Now, I have run over this matter very briefly and rapidly, 

 and I have just one word to say in conclusion. Forestry with us 

 is a business proposition. We do not in our hearts love the 

 trees any less because we do not talk about our love for them. 

 But you will never get the owners of a forest land to keep them 

 in forest for merely sentimental reasons; that has been tried 

 and it does not work. But the thing you can do, and the thing 

 we are doing on a large scale in the United States is this: — If you 

 can show these owners that it is worth while to practise forestry, 

 that forest lands can be cut over, and if the methods suggested bv a 

 true system of forestry are followed the lands will be worth more 

 than before you convince them that forestry is worth something. 



And finally the end and aim of all this work is a very definite 



