Yon nave created a new profession of the highest importance, of 

 the highest usefuhiess to the State, and 3'ou are in honor bound to 

 yourselves and tlie people to make that profession stand as high as an}" 

 other profession, however intimately connected with our highest and 

 finest development as a nation. You are engaged in pioneer work in 

 a calling whose opportunities for public service are very great. Treat 

 that calling serioush^; remember how much it means to the country 

 as a whole. The profession you have adopted is one which touches 

 the Republic on almost every side — political, social, industrial, com- 

 mercial; to rise to its level you will need a wide acquaintance with the 

 general life of the nation, and a view point both l:»road and high. 



Any profession which makes 3'ou deal with your fellow-men at large 

 makes it necessary that if you are to succeed j^ou should understand 

 what those fellow-men are, and not mereh' what thev are thought to 

 be by people who live in the closet or the parlor. You have got to 

 know who the men are with whom you are to work, how they feel, 

 how far you can go, when you have to stop, when it is both safe and 

 necessai'v to push on. ^ 



1 believe that the foresters of the United States will create a more 

 effective system of forestry than we have yet seen. If not, gentlemen, 

 if 3'ou do not, I shall feel that you have fallen behind your brethren in 

 other callings, and I do not believe that you will fall behind them. 

 Nowhere else is the development of a country more closely bound up 

 with the creation and execution of a judicious forest policy. This is, 

 of course, especially true of the West, but it is true of the East also. 

 Fortunately, in the ^Vest we have been able, relatively to the growth 

 of the country, to begin at an earlier daj^, so that we have been able 

 to establish great forest reserves in the Rocky Mountains instead of 

 having to wait and attempt to get Congress to pay large sums for their 

 creation, as we are now endeavoring to do in the Southern Appalachians. 



In the administration of the national forest reserves, in the intro- 

 duction of conservative lumbering on the timber tract of the lumber- 

 man and the wood lot of the farmer, in the practical solution of forest 

 problems which aft'ect well nigh ever}^ industry and every activit}^ of 

 the nation, the members of this societv have an unexampled field 

 before them. You have a heavy responsibilit}"— every man that does 

 serious work, work worth doing, has on him a heavy responsibility — 

 for upon the development of your work the development of forestr}" 

 in the United States and the production of the industries which depend 

 upon it will largeh" rest. You have made a good beginning, and I 

 congratulate you upon it. Not only is a sound national forest polic}^ 

 coming rapidly into l)eing, but the lumbermen of the countr}^ are 

 proving their interest in forestry bv practicing it. 



Twenty years ago a meeting such as this to-night would have been 

 impossible, and the desires we here express would have been treated 



