136 "Mature StuMcs in Berkshire. 



body can see how they have contributed to the 

 building of our cities and the construction of our 

 homes. We in America attribute the rapid growth 

 of our population to our unoccupied lands, to our 

 ocean ferries, to our spreading railways. But we 

 may not forget that the railways of this country 

 could not have been laid with the rapidity which has 

 marked their construction if the trees of our forests 

 had not furnished the ties on which the miles of 

 steel rails have been laid. We talk about our great 

 protected iron industries as the source of our rapidly 

 developing railway system as if we had somehow 

 made it with our legislative devices, our far-sighted 

 statesmanship and laws. And we never bestow a 

 thought on the munificent contributions to the great 

 result made without a device or an effort upon our 

 part through the bounty of Him who clothed our 

 lands with forests. Take out the wooden ties which 

 hold the rails in place, and you strike out at least one- 

 half the facilities which have aided us in so quickly 

 opening our vast territory to the use of the world. 



Even now, when ruthless consumption of our 

 forest resources has compelled us to think a little 

 about the future, we are sobered and anxious as to 

 how we are to maintain the lines we have built, 

 much more to build new ones, if the ravaging of our 

 forest-lands goes on. Moreover, how could we ever 

 have housed the millions who have come to us, if we 

 had depended upon the slow processes of quarry- 

 ing stone and baking brick, and had not been able to 



