FOKEST PRESERVATION AND NATIONAL PROSPERITY. 29 



and clearly the President is in touch with Western needs and inter- 

 ests. In his message he said: 



It is the cardinal principle of the forest reserve policy of this Administration 

 that the reserves are for use. Whatever interferes with the use of their re- 

 sources is to be avoided by every possible means. 



WILLIAM S. HARVEY, 

 Delegate from Pennsylvania. 



The Appalachian Forest Reservation, the purchase of which has 

 been indorsed and advised by commercial bodies throughout New 

 England and the East, by various forest associations, and by the 

 National Board of Trade, is- of vital interest to the whole people. 

 The Southern States have more than 200 millions of dollars invested 

 in cotton mills. These cotton' mills are in a large measure dependent 

 upon water power. The taking of the forest cover from the Ap- 

 palachian Mountains will largely destroy the opportunity which 

 nature has given the South to increase in wealth and prosperity. 

 Upon the continuance of this forest cover depends almost entirely 

 the water power, navigation, and agriculture of the region south 

 of the Ohio and Potomac rivers and east of the Mississippi. 



THE FIELD OF THE BUREAU OF FORESTRY. 



OVEETON W. PRICE, 



Associate Forester, XT. S. Department of Agriculture. 



The cooperative work of the Bureau began in October, 1898, with 

 the offer of assistance to private owners in the handling of their own 

 lands. From this beginning it has broadened as the direct result of 

 an insistent demand, until it now offers assistance not only in the 

 preparation of working plans, but also in tree planting, either for 

 commercial purposes or for protection, and in discovering the most 

 conservative and profitable methods for the use of the products of the 

 forest. The cooperative State forest studies, which offer a great and 

 increasing field for usefulness, have also grown out of the policy of 

 the Bureau's cooperation with private owners. 



Not only has it brought about the use of new and better methods 

 on the ground, but, above and beyond the benefit to the individual 

 cooperator, this work, through the publication of its results, has been 

 a far-reaching influence in furthering that understanding of the pur- 

 pose and methods of forestry without which its general application 

 is impossible. Thus, the results of the cooperative work can not be 

 measured by the great areas of forest land now under management as 

 the result of working plans prepared by the Bureau, or the 334 plant- 



