10 FOREST PRESERVATION AND NATIONAL PROSPERITY. 



ery and for other purposes. Coal and gas are taking the place of 

 wood as fuel, and cement is taking its place for building. The use 

 of wood, notwithstanding these substitutes, increases every year, and 

 our forests steadily vanish before the axman. 



The extension of railroads, the settlement of the public domain, the 

 building of cities, towns, and villages, the use of wood in paper 

 making, and the opening of mines, call for more wood every year. 

 The extreme East, the extreme West, and the Gulf Coast ar,e now 

 sources of commercial supply. The industries of our country will be 

 carried on at greater expense as wood becomes scarcer and its sub- 

 stitutes become dearer. Agriculture, commerce, and mining will 

 greatly miss the cheap supply of wood to which they have been 

 accustomed. 



* * * rpj ie f u t ure requires planting in the uplands, at the sources of 

 all our streams that should never be denuded, to make the hills store 

 water against times of drouth and to modify the flooding of the low- 

 lands. We have to tell the people of the lower Mississippi every 

 few years to raise their levees to hold the floods that exceed them- 

 selves, as the forest ceases to hold waters that in previous years were 

 directed into the hillssand held back. 



Every tree is beautiful, every grove is pleasant, and every forest 

 is grand; the planting and care of trees is exhilarating and a 

 pledge of faith in the future; but these esthetic features, though 

 elevating, are incidental — the people need wood. They have had it 

 in abundance and have been prodigal in its use, as we are too often 

 careless of blessings that seem to have no end. Our history, poetry, 

 and romance are intimately associated with the woods. Our indus- 

 tries have developed more rapidly because we have had plenty of 

 cheap timber. Millions of acres of , bare hillsides, that produce noth- 

 ing profitably, should be growing trees. 



* * * I look for excellent results from the deliberations of this con- 

 gress, for more light upon vexed questions, and for the statement 

 of new and useful points of view. But above all, I hope from our 

 meeting here there will come a more complete awakening to the vast- 

 ness of our common interest in the forest, a wider understanding of 

 the great problem before us, and a still more active and more earnest 

 spirit of cooperation. Unless you, who represent the business inter- 

 ests of the country, take hold and help, forestry can be nothing but 

 an exotic, a purely Government enterprise, outside our industrial 

 life, and insignificant in its influence upon the life of the nation. 



Without forestry, the permanent prosperity of the industries you 

 represent is impossible, because a permanent supply of wood and 

 water can come only from the wise use of the forest, and in no other 

 way, and that supply you must have. 



Forestry and irrigation go hand in hand in the agricultural devel- 



