6 FOKEST PKESEKVATION AND NATIONAL PKOSPEKITY. 



All of you know that there is opportunity in any new country for 

 the development of the type of temporary inhabitant whose idea 

 is to skin the country and go somewhere else. You all know, and 

 especially those of you from the West, the individual whose idea of 

 developing the country is to cut every stick of timber oif of it, and 

 then leave a barren desert for the home-maker who comes in after 

 him. That man is a curse and not a blessing to the country. The 

 prop of the country must be the business man who intends so to 

 run his business that it will be profitable for his children after him. 

 That is the type of business that it is worth while to develop. 



The time of indifference and misunderstanding is gone by. Your 

 coming is a very great step toward the solution of the forest problem — 

 a problem which can not be settled until it is settled right, and it 

 can not be settled right until the forces which bring that settlement 

 about come not from the Government, not even from the newspapers 

 and from public sentiment in general, but from the active, intelligent, 

 and effective interest of the men to whom the forest is important from 

 a business point of view, because they use it and its products, and 

 whose interest is therefore concrete instead of general and diffuse. 



* * * It was only a few years ago that the practical lumberman felt 

 that the forest expert was a man who wished to see the forests pre- 

 served as bric-a-brac, and the American business man was not pre- 

 pared to do much from the bric-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 understanding that they must work 

 for a common end, work to see the forest preserved for use. The 

 great significance of this congress comes from the fact that hence- 

 forth the movement for the conservative use of the forest is to come 

 mainly from within, not from without; 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 immediately dependent upon Avood, water, or 

 grass from the forest. The manufacturing industries, whether or 

 not wood enters directly into their finished product, are scarcely, 

 if at all, less dependent upon the forest than those whose connection 

 with it is obvious and direct. 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 



