I 



THE PERIOD FROM 1878 TO 1891 93 



matter belongs rather to the decade of the eighties and later. In 1 880, 

 ecretary Schurz spoke of the "wholesome sentiment growing up," 

 and of the many letters that were coming to his office asking for better 

 timber protection. "There is scarcely a responsible journal in the 

 United States," he said, "that has not during the last two years, . . . 

 published articles on the injury inflicted upon the country by rapid 

 and indiscriminate destruction of its forests." Without doubt, Schurz 

 exaggerated here, yet the next year Commissioner McFarland said: 

 "The special agents report that in many localities which have hitherto 

 been hostile to them, . . . there at present seems to be a general 

 feeling in favor of the suppression of further depredations."^"^ 



About this time several magazines began to publish articles relating 

 to forests and forest preservation. The Canadian Monthly Magazine 

 had shown an interest in the preservation of Canadian forests as early 

 as 1871, and that journal continued to bring out occasional articles 

 in subsequent years.^"* As previously stated, F. L. Oswald wrote in 

 the Popular Science Monthly/ in 1877 concerning the sanitary influ- 

 ence of trees ;^**° and two years later he wrote on the same subject for 

 the North American Review. ^^^ In the latter year. The Nation printed 

 an able discussion regarding the need of a system of forestry. ^"^ Other 

 magazines followed, and the newspapers did something to help rouse 

 public opinion. 



In the eighties, there was considerable newspaper writing regarding 

 forests and the tariff on lumber. In 1856, the treaty of reciprocity 



103 Report, Land Office, 1880, 171 ; 1881, 376. 



104 Aug., 1879, 136. 



105 Aug., 1877, 385. 



106 "The inhabitants of Persia, Egypt and Mesopotamia, and the Mediterranean 

 nations, who once enjoyed heaven on this side of the grave, have thus perished 

 together with their forests," wrote Mr. Oswald, "leaving us a warning in the ruins 

 of their former glory, which nothing but a plea of religious insanity can excuse us 

 for having left unheeded for the last eighteen hundred years. The physical laws 

 of God can not be outraged with impunity, and it is time to recognize the fact that 

 there are some sins against which one of the Scriptural codes of the East contains 

 a word of warning. The destruction of forests is such a sin, and its significance is 

 preached by every desolate country on the surface of this planet. Three million 

 square miles of the best lands which ever united the conditions of human happi- 

 ness have perished in the sand drifts of artificial deserts, and are now more irre- 

 trievably lost to manltind than the island ingulfed by the waves of the Zuyder Zee." 

 (No. Am. Review, Jan., 1879, 135.) 



107 Jan. 30, 1879, 87. 



