SOME QUESTIONS ANSWERED. 9 



despoil the state of her beauty and her wealth, and to those who are shame- 

 less we can only mete out the measure that the law provides. 



FIGHTING FOREST FIRES. 



BY PROF. FILIBEBT ROTH. 



The great power of proper moral conceptions has been recognized since 

 the beginning of man's social and political life. It is the proper moral con- 

 ception of the "mine and thine" which, far more than all written law, keeps 

 ninety-nine per cent of our people from interfering with their neighbor's 

 property; and it is the moral conceptions of the people which make and un- 

 make law, enforce law or make the written word a "dead letter." One of 

 the most striking illustrations of this is found in the moral conception and 

 consequently in the legal attitude of the people of the United States toward 

 the forest as a property. 



Centuries of experience have gradually established among the people 

 of Central Europe a proper moral conception with regard to the forest. 

 It has taught them to look upon and to treat the forest like the farmer's 

 home, his buildings or his crops, to provide in their laws for the protection 

 of the forest as for his other property against injury and theft, but above 

 all against that arch enemy of the present, the forest fire. 



When the pilgrim with the severe, clear-cut moral conceptions of his 

 former home came to the shores of this country he found the forest not as a 

 property of great value, carefully parcelled out among its many owners, but 

 he found it a serious obstacle to progress, a cumbrance on the land 

 to be fought with axe and fire before the soil coidd yield the crops he needed 

 most. In spite of the warnings of thoughtful men the moral conception with 

 regard to the forest as a property changed, the few regulations which 

 were passed remained a dead letter and the forest was fought with fire 

 and axe. 



This change in moral conception or rather this perversion continued and 

 grew. It is this lamentable perversion which finds expression in the firing 

 of hundreds of thousands of acres of forest in the south to "start new feed, " 

 in the incendiary's wanton burning of the abandoned camps, farmsteads 

 of Michigan pineries, in the periodic devastation of the sandy pineries dis- 

 tricts of New Jersey and New England, in the burning of our farmers' wood- 

 lots by the young nimrod. It is this same perversion which makes forestry 

 today seem an impossible task even to the most enterprising of lumbermen. 

 "Why, it would take an army of men to protect my lands " is the usual reply 

 of men who speak from abundance of experience. Naturally enough, 

 the perversion of conception is greater in the district where most of 

 the land is burned over stump waste and sells at less than $1 per acre 

 than in a district where land is worth $50 per acre, is all settled and 75 per 

 cent of it is improved. For this reason it is to be expected that the right 

 sentiment, the re-establishment of right conceptions and their enforcements 

 must come from the district where the value of the forest is recognized. As 

 long as Massachusetts, New Jersey or Wisconsin leave the lands of their 

 pineries to the few local people, toiling and battling with no end of difficulties, 

 so long will progress in the right direction be slow, for even the best of senti- 



