8 Proceedings op the 



against his worst enemy — wind. The use of forests 

 as windbreaks out on the plains, where the tree does 

 not grow unless men help it, is of enormous impor- 

 tance, and, Mr. Wilson, among the many services 

 performed by the public-spirited statesman who once 

 occupied the position that you now hold, none was 

 greater than what the late Secretary of Agriculture, 

 Mr. Morton, did in teaching, by actual example as 

 well as by precept, the people of the treeless regions 

 the immense advantage of the cultivation of trees. 

 When wood, dead or alive, is demanded in so 

 many ways, and when this demand will undoubt- 

 edly increase, it is a fair question, then, whether the 

 vast demands of the future upon our forests are likely 

 to be met. You are mighty poor Americans if your 

 care for the well-being of this country is limited to 

 hoping that that well-being will last out your own 

 generation. No man, here or elsewhere, is entitled 

 to call himself a decent citizen if he does not try to do 

 his part toward seeing that our national policies are 

 shaped for the advantage of our children and our 

 children's children. Our country, we have faith 

 to believe, is only at the beginning of its growth. 

 Unless the forests of the United States can be 

 made ready to meet the vast demands which this 

 growth will inevitably bring, commercial disaster, that 

 means disaster to the whole country, is inevitable. 

 The railroads must have ties, and the general opinion 

 is that no efficient substitute for wood for this purpose 

 has been devised. The miner must have timber or he 

 cannot operate his mine, and in very many cases the 

 profit which mining yields is directly proportionate to 

 the cost of timber supply. The farmer, east and west, 

 must have timber for numberless uses on his farm, and 

 he must be protected, by forest cover upon the head- 



