THE AMERICAN FOBESTS B46 



of timber is concerned these agents themselves 

 mi«-ht as well be timber. 1 



That a change from robbery and ruin to a per- 

 manent rational policy is urgently needed nobody 

 with the slightest knowledge of American forests 

 will deny. In the East and along the northern 

 Pacific coast, where the rainfall is abundant, 

 comparatively few care keenly what becomes of 

 the trees so long: as fuel and lumber are not no- 

 ticeably dear. But in the Rocky Mountains and 

 California and Arizona, where the forests are in- 

 flammable, and where the fertility of the low- 

 lands depends upon irrigation, public opinion is 

 growing stronger every year in favor of perma- 

 nent protecton by the federal government of all 

 the forests that cover the sources of the streams. 

 Even lumbermen in these regions, long accus- 

 tomed to steal, are now willing and anxious to buy 

 lumber for their mills under cover of law : some 

 possibly from a late second growth of honesty, but 

 most, especially the small mill-owners, simply be- 

 cause it no longer pays to steal where all may not 

 only steal, but also destroy, and in particular be- 

 cause it costs about as much to steal timber for 

 one mill as for ten, and, therefore, the ordinary 

 lumberman can no longer compete with the large 

 corporations. Many of the miners find that 

 timber is already becoming scarce and dear on 



1 A change for the hetter, compelled hy public opinion, is now 

 going on, — 1901. 



