8 



a-brac standpoint. Now, I think we have got a working agreement 

 between the forester and the business man whose business is the use 

 of the forest. We have got them to come together with the under- 

 standing that they must \v^ork for a common end, work to see the 

 forest preserved for use. The great significance of this congress 

 comes from the fact that henceforth the movement for the conserva- 

 tive use of the forest is to come mainly from within, not from with- 

 out : from the men who are actively interested in the use of the forest 

 in one way or another, even more than from those whose interest is 

 philanthropic and general. 



^ ^ •!• •?• •!• ^ <• 



I shall not pretend this afternoon to even describe to you the place 

 of the forest in the life of any nation, and especially its place in the 

 United States. The great industries of agriculture, transportation, 

 mining, grazing, and, of course, lumbering, are each one of them 

 vitally and imimediately dependent upon wood, water, or grass from 

 the forest. * * * Wood is an indispensable part of the material 

 structure upon which civilization rests; and it is to be remembered 

 always that the immense increase of the use of iron and substitutes 

 for wood in many structures, while it has meant a relative decrease 

 in the amount of wood used, has been accompanied by an absolute 

 increase in the amount of wood used. More wood is used than ever 

 before in our history. Thus, the consumption of wood in shipbuild- 

 ing is far larger than it Avas before the discovery of the art of build- 

 ing iron ships, because vastly more ships are built. * * * There 

 is one point I want to speak about in addition to the uses of the forest 

 to which I have already alluded. Those of us who have lived on the 

 Great Plains, who are acquainted with the conditions in parts of 

 Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas, and the Dakotas, know that wood 

 forms an iromensely portentous element in helping the farmer on 

 those plains battle against his worst enemy — wind. The use of for- 

 ests as windbreaks out on the plains where the tree does not grow 

 unless man helps it is of enormous importance, and, Mr. Wilson, 

 among the many services performed by the public- spirited statesman 

 who once occupied the position that you now hold, none was greater 

 than what the late Secretary of Agriculture, Mr. Morton, did in 

 teaching by actual example as well as by precept the people of the 

 treeless regions the immense advantage of the cultivation of trees. 



When wood, dead or alive, is demanded in so many ways, and when 

 this demand will undoubtedly increase, it is a fair question, then, 

 whether the vast demands of the future upon our forests are likely 

 to be met. You are mighty poor Americans if your care for the well- 

 being of this country is limited to hoping that that Avell-being will 

 last out your own generation. No man here or elsewhere is entitled 

 to call himself a decent citizen if he does not try to do his part 



