12 FOREST PRESERVATION AND NATIONAL PROSPERITY. 



effect upon the lands you own and control, to make the lumber in- 

 dustry permanent, and you will lose nothing by it. If you do not, 

 then the lumber industry will go the way of the buffalo and the 

 placer mines of the Sierra Nevada. But I anticipate no such result. 

 For the fact is that practical forestry is being adopted by American 

 lumbermen. In its results it will surpass the forestry practiced in 

 any other country. The development of practical forestry for the 

 private owner has been more rapid here than in any other country, 

 and I look for a final achievement better than any that has been 

 reached elsewhere. 



JAMES J. HILL, 

 President Great Northern Railway Company. 



[Extract from a letter to the President of the Congress.] 



I very much regret my inability to be present at the Forest Congress. 

 The subject is of importance far beyond the general understanding of the 

 public. The groAvth of population in the United States has prac- 

 tically covered all the land which can be cultivated with a profit with- 

 out artificial moisture. Irrigation and forestry are the two subjects 

 which are to have a greater effect upon the future prosperity of the 

 United States than any other public question, either within or without 

 Congress. 



Hon. JOHN LAMB, 

 Representative in Congress from Virginia. 



* * * For over two hundred years there has been a ceaseless war 

 upon the forest of the South Atlantic States. The early settlers cut it 

 down and burned it up, and their children, with few exceptions, fol- 

 lowed their example. Then came the general consumption for rails 

 and wood ; the demand for mechanical industry ; the destruction for 

 liquidation of farm debts; the sale of cord wood and sawed lumber to 

 Northern markets, till every tree of the original growth in most of 

 the States had been removed. The second growth of old field pine is 

 now receiving the same treatment, with smaller profit to the seller and 

 poorer results to the consumer. Could the farmers of these States 

 be persuaded to adopt the intensive system of farming, and have their 

 poorer lands grow up in timber, they would improve their own con- 

 dition, and hand down to their children valuable possessions. 



The disastrous results of overflows and freshets, caused by the 

 removal of the forests along the banks of the rivers, can not be learned 

 from any statistics. The report made to our committee of agricul- 

 ture shoAvs a distressing condition, and one that appeals strongly for 

 Federal and State legislation. Many valuable farms have been 

 impaired in value, and some utterly destroyed, by the sand and debris 

 washed down by the overflows. Cities and villages that were not 



