Forests Vital to Our Welfare 



5 1 5 



feet of lumber for every day of the cal- 

 endar year. Our factories turn out more 

 finished products than all the factories of 

 Great Britain and Germany combined 

 by more than three thousand millions 

 every twelve months. We transport this 

 matchless product of farm and factory, 

 forest and mine, from the interior to the 

 sea at one-third what similar services 

 cost anywhere else beneath the skies. 

 We carry it from point to point along 

 the coast in better vessels, on quicker 

 time, and at cheaper rates than others. 



But at our coast line we are brought to 

 an abrupt halt. Here we are no longer 

 independent. Our foreign commerce is 

 four times as large as forty years ago, 

 but we carry in our own ships only one- 

 third as many gross tons as forty years 

 ago. W e have protected and encouraged 

 •every interest but our merchant marine, 

 and every protected interest has flour- 

 ished. We have every facility for inter- 

 national commerce except international 

 merchants, international bankers, and an 

 international merchant marine. Shall 

 we not have these ? I am not urging 

 ship subsidies. I am speaking of re- 

 sults, not of methods. If we will but 

 take advantage of our opportunities, we 

 will send these products of farm and fac- 

 tory under every sky and into every 

 port, and make our financial centers the 

 clearing houses of at least a fraction of 

 the world's trade. 



FORESTS VITAL TO OUR WELFARE 



From an Address by President Roosevelt at 

 Raleigh, N. C, October 19, 1905 



AND now I want to say a word to you 

 on a special subject in which all 

 the country is concerned, but in which 

 North Carolina has a special concern. 

 The preservation of the forests is vital 

 to the welfare of every country. China 

 and the Mediterranean countries offer 

 examples of the terrible effect of de- 

 forestation upon the physical geography, 

 and therefore ultimately upon the na- 

 tional well-being of the nations. One of 



the most obvious duties which our gen- 

 eration owes to the generations that are 

 to come after us is to preserve the ex- 

 isting forests. The prime difference be- 

 tween civilized and uncivilized peoples 

 is that in civilized peoples each genera- 

 tion works not only for its own well-be- 

 ing, but for the well-being of the gener- 

 ations yet unborn, and if we permit the 

 natural resources of this land to be de- 

 stroyed so that we hand over to our chil- 

 dren a heritage diminished in value, we 

 thereby prove our unfitness to stand in 

 the forefront of civilized peoples. One 

 of the greatest of these heritages is our 

 forest wealth. It is the upper altitudes 

 of the forested mountains that are most 

 valuable to the nation as a whole, es- 

 pecially because of their effects upon the 

 water-supply. Neither state nor nation 

 can afford to turn these mountains over 

 to the unrestrained greed of those who 

 would exploit them at the expense of 

 the future. 



We cannot afford to wait longer be- 

 fore assuming control, in the interest of 

 the public, of these forests ; for if we 

 do wait the vested interests of private 

 parties in them may become so strongly 

 intrenched that it may be a most serious 

 as well as a most expensive task to oust 

 them. 



If the Eastern states are wise, then 

 from the Bay of Fundy to the Gulf we 

 will see within the next few years a pol- 

 icy set on foot similar to that so fortu- 

 nately carried out in the high Sierras of 

 the West by the national government. 

 All the higher Appalachians should be 

 reserved, either by the states or by the 

 nation. I much prefer that they should 

 be put under national control, but it is a 

 mere truism to say that they will not be 

 reserved either by the states or by the 

 nation unless you people of the South 

 show a strong interest therein. 



Such reserves would be a paying in- 

 vestment, not only in protection to many 

 interests, but in dollars and cents to the 

 government. The importance to the 



