American Porest Congress 429 



Rockies, Cascades, and Sierras, where the king of the 

 larches, the Douglas spruce and the majestic Sequoias 

 stand alone as sole survivors on the horizon of antiquity 

 and speak of a past so remote that history makes no 

 attempt to follow. 



From each section of the country came the delegates, 

 that as loyal daughters of this Republic they might 

 consider those problems that stand closest to the 

 nation's life and most affect her common weal. The 

 seven days were crowded full of earnest thought and 

 anxious desire to know how best to combat the forces 

 of evil and dispel ignorance to the end that our land 

 may be filled with prosperous homes and we be a 

 virtuous and happy people. 



Forestry we approached last as if to be reminded 

 that back of the whirr of spindles, the infected air of 

 sweat shops and the stiffling, vice-polluting atmosphere . 

 of crowded tenements, after consideration of soulless 

 corporations and corrupt party politics we should 

 move back to nature and take comfort in the thought 

 that in field and forest lies the nation's hope. The 

 land policy and the forest policy of our country holds 

 the key to the solution of many of the problems that 

 vex the social economist of to-day. Henry Clay held, 

 back in the fifties, that the land policy of the country 

 will be a vital problem of the day after the tariff 

 question has ceased to exist. We recognize in 1905 

 that he should have included its twin sister, the forest 

 policy, which must go hand in hand with the land 

 policy, as an essential part of it, if our valleys shall 

 be watered and fruitful, our deep waterways be kept 

 open and float our cargoes, and our waste land be 

 utilized and Columbia's beauty be perpetuated. 



I extend to this body fraternal greetings from that 

 General Federation of Women's Clubs, eight hundred 



