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Sierra Club Bulletin. 



truths during the past year or two. Among other things, it has 

 become apparent that forests, and especially mountain forests, 

 are of value, not for their timber alone, but to a far greater extent 

 as reservoirs of water to regulate the flov/ of our streams. 



The people of the Pacific Coast and the Rocky Mountain States 

 were among the first to appreciate this fact, and to them has 

 already come the benefit of government regulation of their moun- 

 tain forests. Now the East has learned its lesson, too. It has 

 awakened from its ignorance, and is eager to protect itself against 

 the evils that it perceives to be imminent if unrestricted timber 

 slashing continues on the headwaters of its im.portant rivers. 



This is not a matter which concerns New England and the 

 South alone. It is a national calamity which is threatening, for 

 if this nation is a unit, that which affects the integrity and pros- 

 perity of a substantial percentage of its area must be of conse- 

 quence to the -whole. Certainly it is that in no sense can this 

 problem of conserving the Appalachian forests be regarded as a 

 local affair. The East has cheerfully done its part to aid the 

 West in protecting its forests and its waters. It now appeals to 

 the West for assistance to conserve the same resources on the 

 other side of the continent. The East is not asking something 

 for nothing; it does not ask the nation to shoulder the whole 

 burden, and it does not ask for special legislation devised to solve 

 the problems of a single section. 



The Eastern and Southern States must help themselves under 

 the terms of the so-called Weeks bill if they would have the 

 nation lend its aid. It is seldom that Congress is asked to enact 

 a bill so thoroughly national in its scope as is this bill which 

 has been introduced by Mr. Weeks of Massachusetts. Its terms 

 are appHcable to all portions of the country wherever streams 

 of interstate importance rise in the midst of privately owned 

 forests. It is not improbable that the West itself may need to 

 invoke its powers at some future time, for not all the mountain 

 forests in the Rockies, the Sierra, and the Cascades are included 

 in the national reserves. Neither is it a confiscatory measure, nor 

 one likely to discourage private enterprise. It is the mildest and 

 the sanest piece of socialistic legislation that has been drafted in 

 a long time. In short, it plans to furnish the minimum of govern- 

 ment interference, and that in a way which is well calculated to 

 stimulate private endeavor through the fostering of the very 

 resources on which such endeavor must depend for its success. 



The one feature of the Weeks bill which met with Western 

 opposition in the last session, where it was first introduced, has 

 been eliminated from the draft which is before the present Con- 

 gress. Western members objected to the use of the proceeds of 

 the existing national forests for the acquisition of others in the 



