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THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



The National Forests and the Forest Service. 



By Judge D. C. Beaman, Denver, Colo. 



Nothing is further from my desire or purpose than 

 to disparage in any degree the benefits arising from the 

 establishment of forest reserves in forest areas of the 

 Rocky Moimtains. 



Forest preservation, water supply and kindred sub- 

 jects have long been of interest to me as a citizen de- 

 sirous of promoting them in so far as consistent with 

 justice to and peace and contentment among those who 

 are more directly and pecuniarily interested. 



I go even further in the protection of forests than 

 the Forest Service has ever gone, and contend that no 

 sound and thrifty tree should ever be cut, except to 

 supply the localities near to, or necessarily dependent, 

 for their proper development, on the respective forests. 



This, these localities are justly entitled to, and this 

 no one should have the power to deny them. 



Notwithstanding the benefits which have accrued 

 from the forests, and are likely still to accrue therefrom, 

 it is nevertheless true that from a narrow and mistaken 

 policy in some directions pursued by the Forest Service, 

 there is nothing else in recent times that has alienated 

 so many people from a cordial support of these govern- 

 mental operations. 



I want to say at the outset that I absolve Secretary 

 Wilson from direct responsibility for these unwise and 

 oppressive acts. I have known him for nearly a genera- 

 tion. I went to Iowa when it was a territory, and there 

 was neither a railroad, a telegraph nor a bathtub west 

 of the Mississippi river. He came soon after. I honor 

 and respect him as a great and good man. 



< It seems also proper for me to say that, having lived 

 on the frontier for nearly sixty years, I believe I am 

 pretty well acquainted with frontier people and condi- 

 tions generally; that business and recreation have, for 

 the last twenty-five years, taken me through the tim- 

 bered regions of the mountains of Colorado, more gen- 

 erally and frequently than most men, and given me more 

 than ordinary familiarity with the people and conditions 

 peculiar to them, and I believe qualify me to discuss the 

 questions that I propose to present to you. 



Time forbids any presentation whatever of the ob- 

 structive measures which have practically stopped all 

 mineral prospecting in forest reserves, or any. individual 

 cases of grievances of cattlemen or homesteaders, which 

 are numbered by hundreds, except so far as may be 

 necessary to illustrate the manner in which the Forest 

 Service is trying to deceive the people and restrict the 

 development of the forest states, notwithstanding its 

 loud professions to the contrary. 



We are now in a progressive, as well as a sensa- 

 tional period, and it is well to separate these ideas and 

 eliminate so far as possible from serious consideration 

 the latter. 



Mr. Pinchot, as the head of the Forest Service, has 

 treated us to theories of both kinds. 



Mr. Pinchot says that heretofore, and even now, we 

 are wasting our resources; that they will soon be ex- 

 hausted, whereas they should be preserved for posterity. 

 This he especially applies to coal, iron and timber, and 

 figures out the number of years that these resources will 

 last. 



At the time he made his figures, however, some 



recent discoveries of enormous bodies of coal in Alaska, 

 and iron in Pennsylvania, had not been made. 



He puts the coal and the iron ore upon the same 

 basis for exhaustion, ignoring the fact that while we 

 absolutely consume our coal, we do not consume our 

 iron ore ; that its form is simply changed, and that prac- 

 tically all the iron ore ever mined is still in existence in 

 some form, and that when the days of extensive railroad 

 building in this country shall be over, and the air ship 

 in successful operation, there may be a surplus of scrap 

 iron instead of a scarcity of iron ore. 



How are we wasting our resources today? It is 

 easy to make this charge, but has Mr. Pinchot ever in- 

 formed us just what we are to do to prevent this so- 

 called waste ? Shall we stop mining coal, shut down our 

 steel works, gas and electric plants, and go back to the 

 blacksmith shop and the tallow candle? 



It is nothing new to have hobgoblins of future dis- 

 aster placed on dress parade to frighten the credulous. 

 Eminent professors of science years ago, on the basis of 

 statistics carefully worked out, showed that the world 

 was nearing the end of its gold resources ; that starvation 

 would confront us in a few years; that the sun is fast 

 drawing near, the recent heat being only a part of the 

 process by means of which the extremes of temperatures 

 will change places; that what is now the torrid south 

 will become the frozen north, and vice versa, so that be- 

 fore many years palm trees will grow in Alaska, cane 

 sugar and cotton will be the harvests of Maine and Colo- 

 rado, and the mountains of the west be no longer cov- 

 ered with snow and coniferous forests. 



Another, with equally convincing argument, pre- 

 dicts that the atmosphere will desert us, and waterless 

 rocks and sand only remain in a sunless and starless 

 universe. 



Mr. Pinchot has recently seized upon the starvation 

 idea as a good thing to play on, as, in his article in your 

 souvenir of this Congress, he says that by 1950 our 

 population will be at least 150 millions, and "That will 

 call for twice as much food as in 1900. If our children 

 are not to go hungry, we must either grow more on our 

 present farms, or make new farms by reclaiming the 

 desert and the swamp. But at the best, reclamation can 

 supply but a small part of the increasing needs of the 

 coming generation." 



So we will be right up against it in forty-one years. 

 You will, however, observe that he says nothing about 

 reclaiming those parts of the forest reserves which are 

 treeless, and suitable for agriculture, of which there are 

 thousands of acres. The reason for this omission will 

 be shown presently. 



Mark Twain, I believe it was, in referring to this 

 character of science, said that is was "very fascinating; 

 one gets such wholesale returns of conjecture from such 

 a trifling investment of fact." 



Not only has Mr. Pinchot advised us long ago just 

 how much timber we have, but just how long it would 

 last, had not forestry scientifically solved the question 

 of its preservation and utilization, and we had supposed 

 that these questions were forever settled, at least in 

 Washington. Notwithstanding this, he recently issued 

 two circulars to consumers of and dealers in timber. 



