American Forest Congress 195 



ever is preferred, I will say that I come primed and 

 fortified with the belief that 



"Long as the light holds out to burn, 

 The vilest sinner may return." 



And in this particular direction we cooperage people 

 have sinned atrociously. 



Now, ladies and gentlemen, I shall not follow my 

 journalistic associate of the American Lumberman, 

 Mr. ' Defebaugh, in the erection of any pedestals on 

 which to place cooperage people. I shall not follow 

 him in picturing my cooperage friends as natural and 

 patriotic conservators of our forest areas. I shall 

 not deny that we have been wasteful, nor shall I seek 

 to defend that wastefulness, nor shall I discuss the ques- 

 tion of man's right to do with his own just what he sees 

 fit. I come simply to lay our symptoms, as I see them, 

 before Dr. Wilson, Chief Surgeon Pinchot, and their 

 assistants, with the hope that they can successfully 

 prescribe for our ailments. It is only the sick that 

 require a physician, and on that hypothesis I fail to 

 see why Editor Defebaugh, as the representative of 

 those well-behaved and immaculate lumbermen, came 

 here at all. 



We cooperage people make no claims of that kind. 

 We have been wasteful, and as though in pursuit of 

 the most lofty ambition, we have for years gone at the 

 destruction of at least two of the noblest specimens of 

 the American forest, the white oak and the American 

 elm, and followed them so relentlessly, that the ends 

 of both are well in sight, unless the American Forestry 

 Association or Bureau of Forestry will stay the hand 

 of the stave man, do something to repair his wasteful- 

 ness, or satisfy his rapacity with other woods of which 

 a greater abundance is obtainable. 



