American Forest Congress 415 



The purpose of our coming together, with the im- 

 portant interests represented and identified with this 

 Congress, is to produce practical results. Our distin- 

 guished President said, in the address which he read 

 to us this morning, that the "period of talking is past 

 and the period of doing has come." I think all of us 

 can rejoice in the fact that there has never been a 

 period in the history of the United States that was such 

 a period of doing. We have to-day an administration 

 that does things. American citizenship has been ex- 

 alted in the eyes of the entire world through the 

 methods of doing those things. Mr. Chairman, it is an 

 administration where personnel counts for much, and 

 we are greatly honored in the work that many of us 

 have been so deeply interested in for many years, in 

 having you at the head of this great economic work. 

 At first we were ridiculed for being theorists and 

 idealists, and we were told that there was nothing 

 practical in our ends and aims. We are thankful to- 

 day that that spirit has disappeared. We are also 

 highly honored in having the President of the United 

 States the honorary president of this Congress, who 

 will also deliver one of the most important addresses, 

 which address is to embrace in its scope, forestry in 

 its relation to the United States. Probably all of you 

 are aware that perhaps we to-day would be aborigines 

 if it were not indirectly for forestry. 



You all know the man who discovered America 

 more than four hundred years ago. Columbus had 

 great trouble with his crew, they mutinied and had 

 decided that they would allow him no longer to pursue 

 his course to find land that they never believed would 

 be found, and they determined that they would compel 

 him to return to their native land, and just at that 

 juncture one of those men, looking overboard into the 



