functory. In the meantime, public opinion on this subject, which 

 might be as effective as legal enactment, has comfortably slumbered. 



Even if we now abjectly repent of our sins of omission and com- 

 mission in our treatment of the forests and streams which nature has 

 given us, and reproach ourselves for the neglect of a trust imposed on 

 us for the benefit of future generations, we must at the same time 

 humbly confess that the punishment we have suffered by flood, by 

 drouth, by tornado, by fire, by barrenness of soil, and by loss of 

 timber value, is well deserved. 



In these circumstances it is exceedingly gratifying to have an appro- 

 priate opportunity to congratulate those who have constantly labored 

 in the cause of forestry and forest preservation, as well as those inter- 

 ested in the cognate subject of irrigation, upon the prospect that these 

 topics are to have more prominent places in governmental care. 



Through the teachings of intelligent forestry it has been made plain 

 that in our Western localities ruinous floods and exhausting droughts 

 can be largely prevented, and productive moisture in useful degree and 

 at needed periods secured, by reasonable and discriminating preserva- 

 tion of our forest areas; the advocates of irrigation have been led to 

 realize that it is useless to provide for the storage of water unless the 

 sources of its supply are protected; and all those who, in a disinter- 

 ested way, have examined these questions concede that tree growth and 

 natural soil on our watersheds are more valuable to the masses of our 

 people than the footprints of sheep or cattle. 



The opportune time has arrived when effective public interest in 

 forestry and forest preservation should be persistently aroused and 

 stimulated. ' ' 



GKOVER CLEVELAND. 



A Famous Mining Engineer. 



"The ever-increasing rapidity of exploitation consequent upon the 

 exigencies of modern engineering and economic practice inevitably 

 leads to an alarming diminution of the lives if I may use that term 

 of our mineral products. The culmination of our mining industry is 

 to be reckoned by decades, and its declension (if not practically its 

 economic exhaustion) in generations, not in centuries." 



JOHN HAYS HAMMOND. 



An American Political Economist. 



" If we want to prolong American prosperity and maintain the high 

 level of American wages, our wage being double that of the other 

 nations of the earth, we must protect our facilities and enlarge our 

 ability to produce and manufacture the things that we manufacture 

 at the lowest cost. * * If we had no advantage in the marketing 

 of our goods, either in excellence or quality or cheapness of produc- 

 tion, it simply would mean that American labor would be reduced to 

 the labor of all other nations of the world, and if we want to maintain 

 its high level we must protect the facilities that will enable us to pro- 

 duce our goods at the very lowest possible cost." 



WILLIAM S. HARVEY. 



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