AMERICAN FOREST CONGRESS 343 



There was one thing the President said yesterday 

 that I as a Western man cannot fully endorse. He said, 

 in substance, that if the forests of the West are to be 

 saved, the people of the West must save them. I say 

 to you that if the forests of Oregon and Idaho and 

 Washington and Montana and Colorado are not to be 

 saved unless the people of those States save them, 

 they will never be saved. If they are to be saved at 

 all, it will be by Theodore Roosevelt and the people 

 of the East. 



I want right here to express the obligations we owe 

 to President Roosevelt for going into the West and 

 making forest reserves which have saved thousands 

 upon thousands of acres of forests of the West that 

 never would have been saved had it not been for 

 Theodore Roosevelt. 



It is also a matter of history that the forest policy 

 which now exists was forced upon the West against 

 its will by Grover Cleveland by executive order. 



You find such Congressmen as Mr. French, from 

 Idaho, arguing against the repeal of the Timber and 

 Stone Act and making such arguments as I have 

 heard him make, that it was a good thing for the Gov- 

 ernment to sell a man for $400 a quarter section of 

 land, which he could turn around and sell for $4,000 

 that it induced people to go to Idaho and gave them 

 capital to start in business. Don't you suppose that 

 if you offered a bonus of $3,600 in cash out of the 

 national treasury to every many who would come to 

 Washington to live that you could get more people to 

 reside here and raise the value of real estate in the 

 city? That is the proposition from the Idaho stand- 

 point as applied to the city of Washington. 



Before I close I wish to specify some definite and 

 specific things which should be done : 



