GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF THE FORESTS. 89 



oxydized blood and disease, both physical and mental, involving fearful 

 costs, what public economy is more important for legislation than encour- 

 agement to tree planting and preservation? 



GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF 

 THE FORESTS. 



TESTIMONIALS. 



The American Forestry Association has taken the lead for government 

 control of the forest cover of the country. Minnesota is perhaps as pro- 

 nounced as any other state. The Forestry Association, now stronger than 

 ever before, and the Horticultural Society, are a unit in this respect. 

 Many of our presses favor it, and educational professors. It is believed 

 that were it properly submitted to the people to vote upon, no doubt a large 

 majority would answer in the affirmative. 



Hon. S. M. Owen hits the nail as with a sledge hammer: "Governmental 

 forest planting co-existent with governmental encouragement to forest 

 destruction, is a bung-hole waste and a spigot-saving policy so idiotic that 

 our posterity will be amply justified in derisively laughing at our folly; and 

 it is a policy that cannot be changed too quickly." 



Prof.Wm. R.Dobbyn, editor of "The Progressive Age," views the situation 

 from a continental standpoint, maintaining what is evident fact, that 

 national forestry is the foster parent of our civilization: "If we are to 

 profit by the experience of those nations which have created bureaus of 

 forestry, and through them have succeeded in reforesting their denuded 

 territories, we will never cease agitating until Congress and the various 

 states, each in their sovereign capacity, shall establish forestry departments 

 of great energy. Nothing less than governmental forestry will save this 

 continent from becoming a wind-swept, arid waste, and only intelligent 

 agitation will ever create a public opinion out of which must be built those 

 national and state bureaus of forestry. In the spirit of the patriot and in 

 the spirit of the cosmopolitan, we therefore should agitate for the trees, the 

 saviors of our civilization, the promise of our future." 



J. S. Harris, one of our veterans in horticulture and forestry, and also 

 Col. Stevens, president of the Forestry Association and of the State 

 Agricultural Society, place the great problem on the ground of human 

 rights and unmonopolized usufruct of the forests. "There is no man," 

 says the former gentleman, "who has the right to eat up the bread that a 



