A FORESTRY PROGRAM 



13 



Interest in the forestry movement springs from im- 

 pulses that are characteristically feminine. A woman's 

 instinct commands that useful and beautiful things 

 be saved from waste and destruction, and that 

 careful provision be made for the future into which 

 our children are growing up. These are precisely the 

 objects of forest conservation. The useful and the 

 beautiful of our own time and especially of the time 

 of our children are menaced by the neglect and care- 

 less use of forests. 



And this is not one of the causes in which women, 

 how 7 ever they may long to act, find themselves helpless 

 to do so. Many opportunities lie open to women's 

 organizations for practical activity in the forestry 

 cause. 



The first essential of systematic work for forest 

 conservation is that each forested State have a State 

 forestry department. In the few forested States that 

 have not yet established such departments the 

 women's organization has a clean-cut job ready to 

 its hand. In many of the States forestry depart- 

 ments have been created, but are crippled by the 

 meagerness of their appropriations. Additional funds 

 may be needed to improve the State's system of fire 

 prevention and control or to support the intensely 

 practical project of sending out foresters to teach 

 farmers and other private land owners how to de- 

 velop and care for woodlands ; or they may go into 

 the purchase of State forests. The creation or en- 

 largement of State or municipal forests is an activity 

 in which a number of women's organizations have 

 chosen to go on their own responsibility, purchasing 

 forest land as a useful and perpetual gift to the State 

 or the community. Land for this purpose can usually 

 be bought very cheaply, since forests will grow on 

 land totally unsuitable for farm purposes ; and thus 

 w T ith only a small outlay it is possible to establish 

 a public resource of value and an object of civic pride 

 which incidentally stimulates the interest of the public 

 in forestry. Women's clubs have sometimes found an 

 additional incentive in the opportunity to purchase a 

 tract of special historical interest or an especially 

 beautiful forest area which otherwise might have been 

 disfigured by destructive lumbering. 



The great value in any welfare campaign of reach- 

 ing the minds of children requires no artificial em- 

 phasis in its presentation to women's clubs. Forest 

 conservation is a matter of the most urgent concern 

 to the rising generation, and children should be learn- 

 ing of it. No more practical step can be planned by a 

 club anxious to assist in this cause than the introduc- 

 tion of forest study into the schools. In a number of 

 States elementary instruction in forestry has been 

 made a regular part of the course in public schools, 

 either as a distinct subject or in correlation with 

 other subjects. Women's clubs have a brilliant op- 

 portunity to bring about the introduction of such 

 courses into the schools of other States, and to see 

 that when introduced the work is properly supported. 

 In many cases forest study in the local schools can 

 be encouraged by the gift of equipment or material. 



In the line of adult education it is suggested that 

 clubs get in touch with the Federal and State forest 

 services and with forestry associations, which will 



