90 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 



future generation wants. He has no right to destroy the forests that 

 favorably influence the climatic conditions of our time, and thus make it 

 impossible for our successors to till the soil." 



"To be successful," says C. L. Smith, former secretary of the Forestry 

 Association, "forestry must be the protege of the state. The interest is 

 too great, the stakes too high, the individual too selfish, the profits too 

 remote, the climatic and sanitary effects too important, the benefits so 

 universal, philanthropists so scarce, that the state should immediately take 

 hold of the matter, and do something definite, practical and extensive." 



Judge L. R. Moyer, superintendent of the horticultural station at Monte- 

 video, Minn., says prompt measures should be taken to preserve the 

 natural forests in the northern parts of the state. "No more timber school 

 land should be sold. The state's title to all timbered land acquired at tax 

 sales ought to be perfected, and the legislature ought to be prohibited by 

 constitutional amendment from ever selling it. An intelligent forestry 

 policy ought to be adopted, and measures taken to stop forest fires. As 

 crops of timber mature, the stumpage or toe product ought to be sold under 

 careful restrictions, so that the forest should be preserved, to the end that 

 the state forests should always remain a source of permanent income to 

 our noble commonwealth." 



Hon. O. S. Whitmore, editor of "Hardwood," Chicago, 111., a conserv- 

 ative exponent of the great lumber industry of the country, said in his able 

 address at the forestry session of the Horticultural Society, January 11, 

 1893: "Methods of usufruct can and should be controlled by the state. 

 Our hurried, feverish national growth has caused this point to be greatly 

 overlooked. Should the state act upon it at once, the further destruction 

 of forests by fire could be practically prevented. To accomplish this should 

 be work for practical, rational forestry." 



PROFITS OF THE NEW METHODS. 



Until we can convince our lumber brothers that government control of 

 the forests is more profitable than the present system, they will continue 

 to "saw just the same." Mr. Whitmore presented the real merits of the 

 situation: "This is a utilitarian age. Man works for the profit there is in 

 it. The most practical part of rational forestry relating to existing forests 

 is to convince the owner of a forest, be he lumberman or farmer, that it is 

 for his interest to improve upon his present methods of treating it. When 

 he shall be made to see plainly that it will pay him and his children to 

 handle his timber as a periodical crop to be preserved with care, to be cul- 

 tivated in a certain sense, to be protected from everything that might en- 

 danger it, as he would protect his corn field from weeds and insects, then 

 will rational forestry have performed its greatest mission." 



TAXING TIMBER LANDS 



There is no question but that lumbermen are considering the question 

 whether government control will better subserve their ends as viewed from 

 the standpoint of profit. Already they raise objection on the ground "that 

 the market value of cultivated trees, say twenty-five years old, does not 



