STORY OF OUR NATIONAL FOREST 103 



stead of sin. It is an axiom that every generation 

 has the Congress which it deserves. During these 

 generations the people of America slept soundly, so 

 far as concerned the national interest in its forests. 



Rapidly reviewing the acts of Congress and the 

 rulings of departments during these years of forest 

 dissipation, one is more powerfully impressed by the 

 absence of national horizons and the paralysis of the 

 moral sense on the part of both operators and legis- 

 lators even than he is by the frightful losses which 

 the greed of quick wealth imposed on the nation. 

 Each state insisted intensely on disposing as it 

 pleased of the nation's lumber grown within its own 

 boundaries, each lumberman and speculator grabbed 

 strenuously all he could get while it lasted, and each 

 legislator demanded his fullest share of political 

 power and prestige ; nearly all of them ignored abso- 

 lutely the nation's interest. 



Here and there we find emerging on the records 

 of Congress a man of national vision; the rest ap- 

 pear what the rest always are, either self-seekers or 

 lookers-on. There appear many who, like Pontius 

 Pilate, showed interest once or twice but, as soon 

 as vigorously opposed, made haste to wash their 

 hands. It was not until the people themselves awoke 

 to the fact that their wealth of forest had nearly dis- 

 appeared and had assumed control by emphatically 

 instructing their own Congressmen, that the era of 

 conservation, so many years struggling toward the 

 surface, found expression. 



It is always difficult for the mass of the people, 



