Mr. Le Baron. 
Mr. North. 
336 DISCUSSION : FORESTS, RESERVOIRS, AND STREAM FLOW 
the cost of the dam, in favor of the hydro-electric plant. This makes a 
difference of 50% in first cost and the same in interest charge, and 
throws the balance in favor of the water-power. Therefore, his sub- 
sequent deductions are valueless. 
The writer quite agrees with the author in his remarks about diking 
for flood protection, and about transportation by river or rail. This 
question of the propriety of Congress aiding navigation, and having 
no authority, under the Constitution, to build power works to aid 
transportation by rail, only exemplifies the fact that the world is 
growing so fast that a Constitution, which was a perfect instrument in 
its day, can be outgrown by the totally changed conditions of the 
present time. 
Epwarp P: Nortu, M. Am. Soc. C. E.—This very able paper brings 
up a collateral and important question: Even if they accomplish 
all that is claimed for them, will National forests be a National 
beneficence ? 
The general and patent objections to the proposal now before the 
public are: The general installation of National forests would neces- 
sitate a still larger body of Government employees, and either tend to 
the perpetuation of a hierarchy, or to more or less violent changes of 
governmental policy. 
" Their control by the Central Government would impair our habits 
of individual initiative and also those of free association for pro- 
duction. These two habits, possibly more than any others, have been 
the governing factors in the progress of English-speaking peoples. 
Their proposed locations, remote from centers of consumption for 
their products, by entailing the maximum cost for transportation, would 
diminish the resources of both producers and consumers. The fact that 
the General Government is a party does not obviate the necessity of 
making all expenditures return either insurance or profit. 
As an alternative to the dedication of large areas to National forests 
under the control of the Central Government, and as free from the 
objections above recited, the following plan* seems preferable, namely, 
that lands covered by specified stands of trees should be free from 
taxation while the timber is growing and ripening. The numerous 
small groves which would be developed by the adoption of this measure 
would not be subject to the widespread destruction by fires invited by 
large forests, and, in addition to such modification of climate and run- 
off as may be due to timbered areas, would, by furnishing breeding 
places for insect- and vermin-eating birds, hinder, if not arrest, their 
extinction, besides adding to the beauty of the country; both additions 
not without pecuniary value. There should also be a provision of like 
kind for trees grown by the roadside. A prejudice against roadside 
trees, due to the combined effect of the trees and fences in forming 
* Proposed in The Engineering Record, June 13th, 1908. 
