8 FOREST PRESERVATION" AND NATIONAL PROSPERITY. 



give it permanence and power. It is only as the producing and com- 

 mercial interests of the country come to realize that they need to have 

 trees growing up in the forest not less than they need the product of 

 the trees cut down that we may hope to see the permanent prosperity 

 of both safely secured. 



This statement is true not only as to forests in private ownership, 

 but as to the national forests as well. Unless the men from the West 

 believe in forest preservation the western forests can not be pre- 

 served. We here at the headquarters of the National Government 

 recognize that absolutely. We believe, we know, that it is essential 

 for the well-being of the people of the States of the Great Plains, 

 the States of the Rockies, the States of the Pacific slope, that the for- 

 ests shall be preserved, and we know also that our belief will count 

 for nothing unless the people of those States themselves wish to pre- 

 serve the forests. If they do, we can help materially ; we can direct 

 their efforts, but we can not save the forests unless they wish them 

 to be saved. 



I ask, with all the intensity that I am capable of, that the men of 

 the West will remember the sharp distinction I have just drawn 

 between the man who skins the land and the man who develops the 

 country. I am going to work with, and only with, the man who devel- 

 ops the country. I am against the land skinner every time. Our policy 

 is consistent to give to every portion of the public domain its highest 

 possible amount of use, and of course that can be given only through the 

 hearty cooperation of the western people. 



FOUESTS AS PUBLIC BENEFACTORS. 



His Excellency 3. J. JUSSEKAND, 

 The Ambassador of France. 



The forest has one singular and providential advantage over most 

 of the earth-produced elements of our industries. When we have 

 exhausted an iron mine, a gold mine, an oil well, a supply of natural 

 gas, when the oil has been carried in immense pipes from Chicago 

 to New York, and from thence to our private lamps, it is finished. 

 We can consume the thing, we can not make it. Not so with the for- 

 ests. It is in our hands to improve or impair them, to kill them or 

 make them live. 



* * * In France our forests, 3 like all the other inhabitants of the 

 land, have their own code of laws. Since the early times several laws 

 have been passed, all of them to fortify and to improve practically the 

 dispositions of the code of 1827. One of them is the law of 1860, which 

 provides that every landowner who possesses mountain slopes is obliged, 



« The French forests cover an area of 23,517,485 acres, or nearly 18 per cent, 

 of the total land surface. The net annual yield is approximately $2.50 per acre, 

 or, in all, about $58,793,712. 



