American Forest Congress 15 



and the States, and with companies and individuals, 

 is progressing rapidly. Our trained foresters are get- 

 ting into touch with the college and experiment station 

 forces of the States, with companies that hold wood- 

 land for present and future use, and with individuals. 



The Congress is giving liberally to forest research, 

 enabling us to do systematic work with wood in all its 

 uses. 



The future requires planting in the uplands, at the 

 sources of all our streams, that should never be de- 

 nuded, to make the hills store water against times of 

 drouth and to modify the flooding of the lowlands. 

 We have to tell the people of the lower Mississippi 

 every few years to raise their levees to hold the floods 

 that exceed themselves as the forest ceases to hold 

 waters that in previous years were directed into the 

 hills and held back. 



Every tree is beautiful, every grove is pleasant, and 

 every forest is grand; the planting and care of trees 

 is exhilarating and a pledge of faith in the future; 

 but these aesthetic features, though elevating, are inci- 

 dental; the people need wood. They have had it in 

 abundance and have been prodigal in its use, as we 

 are too often careless of blessings that seem to have 

 no end. Our history, poetry and romance are inti- 

 mately associated with the woods. Our industries 

 have developed more rapidly because we have had 

 plenty of cheap timber. Millions of acres of bare 

 hillsides, that produce nothing profitably, should be 

 growing trees. 



We are beginning a meeting which is national in 

 its significance. Never before in this country, nor 

 so far I know in any other country, has a body of men 

 representing such great and varied interests come to- 

 gether to discuss, temperately and foresightedly, the 

 policy and the methods under which the highest per- 



