36 UNITED STATES FOREST POLICY 



eral government, and stealing from the Federal government has fre- 

 quently been regarded with indifference or approval by the public 

 land states. For all these reasons, interest in the protection of the 

 forests was slow to develop, and legislation was generally impossible. 



Interest in tree planting, on the other hand, was stimulated by sev- 

 eral factors, and there were no commercial forces opposed to legisla- 

 tion. The central western states were being rapidly peopled, and here 

 the scarcity of timber was immediately felt as a hardship, while periods 

 of drought in some of the prairie states led to a great interest in the 

 question of the relation of forests to rainfall. As has already been sug- 

 gested, this question of the relation of forests to climate, and espe- 

 cially to rainfall, was one of the most popular topics with writers on 

 forestry during this period. So much had the question been discussed, 

 indeed, that President Loring, in his opening address at the Ameri- 

 can Forestry Congress in 1883, announced: "The influence of forests 

 on rainfall has been so exhaustively discussed that little of value can 

 here be added." 



Nevertheless, this was a live question for many years after. Fuller's 

 "Practical Forestry," appearing in 1884, begins with a treatment of 

 the influence of forests on climate. In the Proceedings of the Ameri- 

 can Forestry Congress in 1885, the influence of forests on climate 

 was mentioned first of all among the considerations noted as actuating 

 the forestry movement ; in fact, a great many of the forestry associa- 

 tion meetings in the eighties and early nineties were to some extent 

 devoted to discussions of this question. As late as 1897, Representative 

 Bartholdt of Missouri expressed his opinion that there was an intimate 

 connection between forest destruction and cyclones. "Is it not a fact," 

 he asked in Congress, "that cyclones and inundations were compara- 

 tively unknown before the wholesale destruction of our forests.''" This 

 exaggeration, by some writers, of the eflPect of forests on climate no 

 doubt had an influence on public opinion. In the states once timbered 

 but now largely barren of merchantable timber, observers claimed to 

 note climatic changes and were demanding reforestation ; and since no 

 commercial forces were opposed to this demand, it was easily enacted 

 into law.^° 



*o Proceedings, Am. Forestry Congress, 1883, 15; 1893, 45, 58: Cong. Bee, May 

 11, 1897, 1007: Bui. 24, Bureau of Forestry, Vol. II, 66. 



