3i8 



RECREATION. 



stumpage on the Pacific coast. Cutting 

 will commence before another 10 years 

 roll around, and shipments will be made 

 to the very markets in which Minnesota 

 and Wisconsin pine is sold to-day. It is 

 true that the cry of wolf has been so often 

 made in regard to there being but a 10 

 years' supply of pine in the Northwest that 

 people believe it is everlasting. If there 

 were pine in sight for the next 20, 30 or 40 

 years, why would those already controlling 

 the bulk of the remaining standing pine go 

 to the coast and buy up great tracts of 

 lumber if it could be yet bought in unlimit- 

 ed quantities at home? 



Every day pine is growing in value. 

 Prosperity in all lines has affected the 

 lumber market, and rough-sawed lumber 

 in some grades is worth just double what 

 it was a year ago. Is it not a natural 

 sequence that a pine tree in the forests 

 to-day is worth more than it was a year 

 ago? 



Nowhere in the United States is there a 

 body of standing white pine of greater 

 value, acre for acre, than that to be found 

 in this Indian reservation. Under the 

 dead and down timber act the lumbermen 

 had in that reservation a veritable gold 

 mine. Those who know whereof they speak 

 come out flatly and state that timber pur- 

 chased from the Indians on the reservation 

 yielded the Indians about one-tenth 

 its market value. In other words, the 

 dead and down timber act opened a door- 

 way to fraud, robbery and pillage. The 

 lumberman is kept out of that territory 

 to-day because the dead and down timber 

 act has been suspended. The closing up 

 of this region as a park and the gradual 

 economical and scientific cutting of the 

 matured timber, from year to year, forces 

 the man who has -fattened under the dead 

 and down timber act into new fields. It is 

 from this very source that all the park 

 opposition is coming! The cry that mak- 

 ing a park of this region means the shut- 

 ting off of so many thousand acres of tilla- 

 ble soil is all nonsense, and the men who 

 make such statements know better. 



But recently the owner of the timber 

 around Walker, a small town on the banks 

 of Leech Lake, was preparing to cut some. 



The citizens, realizing that the surround- 

 ing pine was the only attraction, and that 

 to cut it off meant for all time to come 

 that the village would be simply a grave- 

 yard in a desert of sand and stumps, went 

 strenuously to work and prevailed on the 

 timber owner to stay his hand. 



And, as a general proposition, this holds 

 good with the entire proposed park area. 

 To-day its pine-clad slopes and valleys are 

 a marvel of beauty to the visiting tourist. 

 It simply needs the saw and the axe to 



turn into one vast wilderness of sand, 

 stumps and sloughs a region to-day unex- 

 celled for beauty by any section of the 

 Maine woods or the Adirondacks. 



Ten years from now, should the park 

 proposition meanwhile be turned down in 

 Congress, through the influence of Con- 

 gressmen representing the lumber inter- 

 ests of Minnesota, after the homesteader 

 has gone in, proved up on his timber hold- 

 ings and promptly turned them over to the 

 lumberman, who, in turn, will leave only 

 stumps, sand and desolation after him, per- 

 haps some park enthusiasts may feel as 

 Mr. Rice feels regarding the Celtic council 

 which stood in cahoots with the trolley 

 company and ordered felled those rows 

 upon rows of ancestral elms. 



Every friend of the Minnesota National 

 Park project must understand that the 

 Minnesota delegation in Congress is al- 

 most unanimous against it. The influence, 

 politically, of a mere handful of lumber- 

 men is potent enough to compel the rep- 

 resentatives of our great State to forestall 

 the park by the introduction of a measure 

 of such a drastic nature as to clean up the 

 whole reservation of its standing pine as 

 fast as the thousands of men can cut it 

 down. When the timber is cleared and 

 the stumps and sand are left, the park ad- 

 vocates may agitate all they please. In 

 fact, they can then have the abandoned 

 land for the defaulted taxes. 



In a proposition of this kind it is useless 

 to expect help from the Congressmen of 

 other States, when those of your own State 

 are antagonistic. Therefore, let the read- 

 ers of Recreation in Minnesota at once 

 bring what pressure they can to bear on 

 their Representatives at Washington. It 

 is now or never. Pine once cut will never 

 be regrown. Once the Nelson bill or a 

 substitute for it goes into effect, farewell 

 Minnesota National Park! 



NUT CULTURE. 

 Although forestry is the art which has 

 to do mainly with the production of wood, 

 there are often many material and imma- 

 terial yields which are of more importance 

 than wood production. Agriculture-forest- 

 ry and arboriculture constantly blend into 

 one another, and, although the raising of 

 trees for nuts is more on the order of or- 

 charding than forestry, it is often quite 

 proper to combine the 2, especially in 

 woodlots on the farm. Just as the sugar 

 maple orchard supplies sugar, fuel wood 

 and pasture, so can the nut orchard supply 

 nuts, fuel wood and pasture. In fact, long 

 ago in Europe the value of a forest was 

 rated by the number of swine it would sup- 

 port. I remember last year, while stop- 



