WILL THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE 

 FOREST RESERVES ON A CONSER- 

 VATIVE BASIS RETARD THE DE- 

 VELOPMENT OF MINING? 



BY 



SETH BULLOCK 



Supervisor, Black Hills Forest Reserve 



nr HE request of your honored President for a paper 

 from me to be presented before this distinguished 

 gathering was a genuine surprise, as I am not an 

 adept in that Hne of forest reserve work. My first 

 impulse was to decHne the honor, but after considering 

 the proposition in all its phases, I concluded that in 

 view of the recent favorable legislation by the Congress 

 of the United States, looking towards the placing of 

 the forest reserves and the forest reserve officials in 

 the department so ably administered by Secretary 

 Wilson, that it would be wise for me to endeavor to 

 comply with the request of President Wilson, and if 

 the paper prepared should merit any punishment I 

 could enter that time-honored and usually successful 

 plea of self-defense in mitigation of my sentence. The 

 question upon which I am requested to enlighten this 

 aggregation of diversified wisdom is, "Will the admin- 

 istration of the forest reserves on a conservative basis 

 retard the development of mining?" To properly ar- 

 rive at an understanding and solution of this question 

 (and I assure you that it is a large one), it will first 

 be necessary to determine to what extent the mine is 

 dependent on the forest, and I wish it to be understood 



