142 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETT. 



great movements have originated and whence they have spread as 

 blessings to the whole countr}'. 



Quite aside from the general problems to be placed before our 

 National Congress, are the minor ones which grow out of the 

 condition of each State. 



For Pennsylvania there would at once arise the question : Shall 

 the Commonwealth own the waste ground, — the timbered areas on 

 the chief water shed of these States ? If so, what steps shall it 

 take to secure them, without excessive cost on the one hand, and 

 without injustice to the owner on the other? The general ten- 

 dency of American thought is toward the belief that the individual 

 will in future tolerate less and less meddling by the State with 

 his affairs. It is because of this fact then, that I think the only 

 way the State can protect itself is by owning the needed water- 

 sheds, obtaining them by purchase if need be ; or, if this be not 

 possible, b}' taking them as a cit}' takes ground for a park, or as 

 a railway company takes the land needed for its road-bed. I can 

 see no new principle involved here. If a State can grant to a 

 private corporation the right to take and use private property for 

 public benefit, it is strange indeed that it cannot claim the same 

 right for itself. How csn it give a right which it does not itself 

 possess? New York has alread}' decided this affirmatively. I am 

 convinced that, for us in Pennsylvania, the most pressing demand 

 in the interest of our forests is removal of taxes on land so long 

 as it remains in timber, or, if the owner is to be taxed, it should 

 only be on the timber which he removes, and from which he 

 derives a revenue, or an actual benefit. 



Consider the case for a moment ! We are told, the owner holds 

 these lands in timber because of a prospective higher value, and 

 that he is simply paying for the protection the State renders while 

 he waits. Now if this were true, — and it is not, for the State fails 

 to protect him, — the fact remains that the State is year by year 

 reaping from these forests a benefit vastly in excess of what 

 comes from taxes, but the owner receives nothing. In places 

 where his timber is remote from market the only exclusive privi- 

 lege remaining for him is to despoil the commonwealth of trees that 

 were more needful to it than they could be to him. But the prin- 

 ciple is wrong. Such taxation is neither equal n©r proportionately 

 equal. It is, when reduced to its simplest expression, a tax upon 

 the owner for being a public benefactor. His trees purify the air 



