FIFTH NATIONAL CONSERVATION CONGRESS 381 



ness. We say "Do you want to make more money? They stop the other fellow 

 from destroying dollars you would otherwise share. Forest preservation is a 

 bargain-price insurance policy you can't afford to be without. It's cheap for a 

 short time only. Ivook over our prospectus and invest." 



Now forest preservation is prosperity insurance and insurance is good busi- 

 ness. But it is a commodity that must be paid for in money and careful conduct. 

 The new way is better than the old, but our prospectus is still so general it only 

 gets a certain confiding class of customers. It needs to give more information 

 about the business; information that will both convince the critical and make 

 every customer another salesman. 



Seek local arguments. If for the Atlantic coast, look up the pay-roll total 

 for all lumbering and woodworking industries in your State and the total selling 

 receipts from their manufactured products. The size of the revenue thus kept 

 at home, but which will leave you if these industries have to move nearer some 

 other sources of raw material, will probably amaze you as much as it will the 

 public. Learn how much your consumers pay annually for all forest products 

 and figure how much they would save if there were no import freight bills. 

 Then learn the rate of growth of your own species and refute the popular belief 

 that it is top slow to enable saving these sums to those now living. Do you 

 know that Massachusetts is today manufacturing its fourth crop of white pine? 



lycarn your area of waste land, and with the same definite growth figures 

 to give your statements news value and convincing business accuracy, show 

 what it might be earning the community by producing forest commodities. Cal- 

 culate the tax revenues your existing forests bring, and that which forests on 

 now waste land would pay, and show the consequent reduction of taxation on 

 other property. On definite promises of area, growth rate, and conservative 

 crop values show the revenue obtainable by the State from forest reserves of 

 its own, balance this against the cost of such a project, and prove that you could 

 lower all taxation just as they do in Europe. Study the effect of deforestation 

 on stream flow, use specific familiar examples, and convert the injury into dollars 

 and cents. When you get figures in all these calculations, turn them into popular 

 comparisons that are easily grasped. 



If you live on the Pacific Coast, forget that white pine grows rapidly in 

 Massachusetts and appeal to local pride by saying that here, undoubtedly is the 

 nation's woodlot, where climate and rapid-growing species give an advantage 

 over the East which it is a business crime to leave ungrasped. Show that the 

 area denuded by fire and use will produce an equally valuable crop in, say, 

 sixty years, and that leaving this land idle is costing our five coast forest States 

 about thirty million dollars a year. Add to this the loss by fire and show many 

 millions altogether are being thrown away that might be distributed through 

 every channel of industry. The lumber industry now brings about $140,000,000 

 a year into the four northwest Pacific States. Show that this is more than they 

 get from wheat, wool, fruit, dairying and fisheries combined. The Pacific Coast 

 had more than half the nation's timber. Show how many billion dollars this 

 will bring in if saved for manufacture. Show the wreck of industries that would 



