38 



Our ouly hope is to save what forests we have^till in the public pos- 

 session, so far as they are necessary to the prosperity of the country, 

 by not allowing them to be cut except under such conditions as will 

 keep the forests in good condition; to encourage tree-planting and 

 forest-planting on the part of individuals, corporations, and communi- 

 ties ', and above all, as forming the condition on whiih the rest will be 

 of any avail, to insist that the States shall undertake the systematic 

 cultivation of forests in those places where it may be necessary to pre- 

 serve our streams and climate. 



Some one may ask where the Government is to get the authority for 

 this purpose. In the case of the Federal Government, the answer is 

 easy. It still owns millions of acres of forest lands, which should in- 

 stantly be withdrawn from entry and subjected to a searching examina- 

 tion, by experts, as to its character, reserving permanently to the Gov- 

 ernment those portions which are of fundamental importance to the 

 climate, soil, and streams. In the case of the States much of the very 

 land needed falls into their possession for non-payment of taxes. Let 

 the States keep it. Much of the land needed can be obtained at pri- 

 vate sale for a mere song. Let the States buy it. More, if necessary, 

 can be obtained by the exercise of the right of eminent domain— let 

 the States take it. Shall we allow a railway to take land, no matter 

 how insignificant the line it proposes to construct or how few people it 

 will benefit, and refuse to the States the right to take land for such a 

 purpose as this, on which hangs the welfare of our w^hole people ? 



In all tbis we ask nothing more than that the State shall do for for- 

 estry what it has already done for mining, agriculture^ trade, and 

 transx)ortation, and we ask it not so much in the interest of forestry 

 itself as a separate branch of industry as in the interest of other indus- 

 tries whose prosperity depends on the continued existence of forests. 



It will be noticed that in the preceding discussion w^e have not at- 

 tempted to distinguish particularly between what the National Govern- 

 ment and the various State governments should do, but have indicated 

 rather what they should all do, taken as a whole. The particular part 

 which each should do follows almost as a matter of course from a study 

 of the relations of the different parts of our governmental system. Some 

 of the things we have mentioned, most of them, perhaps, should be done 

 by the States individually. But the Federal Government should cer- 

 tainly go on with the work it has begun in connection with the Depart 

 ment of Agriculture at Washington. 



It should continue the work of acquiring and disseminating informa- 

 tion, and for this purpose should establish experimental forests in dif- 

 ferent parts of the country, which should be wxll equipped and placed 

 under the most skillful direction. It should certainly place a check on 

 the exploitation of forests on Government lunds, and withdraw what 

 remains of our national timber lauds fiom the clutch of the devastators 

 and insist on some regard being paid to general interests by those wh© 



