you writhe and say, "This is not true/' and then make you look 

 around and find that it all is true, and more is true? 



When we first owned this country, one half of its total area was 

 covered with the grandest forests that ever grew in any portion of 

 the world the richest, the most useful, the most valuable for the 

 building of a civilization. Yes, we had trees. We had forests that 

 set the first writers who saw this country wild with admiration, men 

 who came here from reforested Europe. They were all ours. Now 

 they are gone. Are they reared in lasting structures of a great civil- 

 ization ? No ; at least one half of them are ashes or rotted mould. 

 Half of what we have left today also will be ashes or rotted mould. 

 They will never rest in the beams and walls of abiding homes. 



Had we gone on across this continent and left the remnants of our 

 standing woods, we still should have abundance; but we have gone 

 back a second and a third time, gleaning more exactly each little bit 



Fire in the mountains. All such fires have small beginnings. If they were then 

 discovered, to extinguish them would be a small labor. On the National Forests fire 

 guards are stationed in look-out towers or on prominent points so that fires may be 

 reported at once. Some of the states protect their forests in the same manner. 



of wood, until we have reaped our forests as sheep reap the grass lands, 

 leave nothing behind to grow. We have used ever-increasing applian- 

 ces for speed and thoroughness, to supply an ever-increasing demand, 

 at ever - increasing prices. We are converging in ever - increasing 

 numbers, with an ever-increasing zeal, upon what is left; and in our 

 haste to get it all, we are permitting an ever-increasing waste and ruin 

 of the original supply. 



Our very classification shows how sweeping has been the devasta- 

 tion. We now classify as "pine" all sorts of pine Norway pine, 

 Jack pine, pitch pine although we know that true white pine, once 

 the only wood dignified with the name, is, as a great lumber tree, 

 practically an extinct species. As to the hardwoods, twenty years ago 

 we used only oak, walnut, hickory, cherry, maple, birch ; now we add 

 cottonwood, beech, sycamore, all sorts of gum trees, anything that will 



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