t 
The Poor Man’s Woods and the 
Rich Man’s Dams. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
If any lover of the woods had ever any doubt 
as to the necessity for Section 7 of Article VII. 
of this State’s constitution, it would disappear 
when he considers the ridiculous ease with which 
the big interests have just run through the As¬ 
sembly the resolution for the destruction of 100,- 
000 acres of the best Adirondack forest. 
No one seems to consider the little “three per 
centum” joker as anything but a very desirable 
substitute for the only saving section in the ex¬ 
isting constitution without which no merchantable 
timber would stand to-day on the public lands. 
Of course, it is only this little key that these 
men want, for they can as easily have the 
“three” made “thirty” when exploitation gets 
under way. 
All the bare mountain tops and denuded slopes, 
all the lumbered tracts purchased by the State, 
a thousand lakes and 700.000 acres of burned 
lands are included in the area of the Adirondack 
Park. Even the “three per centum of the total 
area of the forest preserve,” which undoubtedly 
will be construed to refer to the total area of 
the Adirondack Park, is considerably over 100,- 
000 acres. Using the official acreage, which is 
much short of the actual acreage, would allow 
99,000 acres. If the Catskill Park is included in 
the computation—and there is nothing to show 
that it cannot be—they can flood about 120,000 
acres. 
This means a very much larger percentage of 
the State’s actual holdings if, as stated by an in¬ 
fluential advocate of the various amendments, 
“private owners now hold three-fourths of that 
territory.” He also states that the timber is 
being cut in the park “three times as fast as it 
is growing.” In the light of this fact it does 
not look like the most efficient kind of conserva¬ 
tion to legalize by this first concession the water 
burial of 100,000 acres of the most valuable 
forest land owned by the State. Most of this 
land on the lower levels and river bottoms that 
will be flooded is because of its easier grades, 
potential accessibility, better soil and bigger tim¬ 
ber worth for forestry or other purposes from 
ten to a hundred, and in places even five hundred 
times as much as the rocky mountain sides 
which figure so largely in the total area. 
The most valuable tree in the woods—the 
white pine in certain districts—grows in num¬ 
bers only along the borders of lakes and streams. 
When the water is drawn low on the drowned 
lands where dams now exist, the big pine stumps 
and sodden logs show where the belts of best 
timber once lined the old stream bed or the 
original lake shores. 
For how long also can we expect the forest 
officials to hold this legalized flooding within 
even the three per centum limit when in the past 
they have not had power to prevent unconstitu¬ 
tional flooding or the cutting of roadways through 
the best timber? Will they have more power 
after the constitution is amended? 
At this time when the State has not yet re¬ 
gained possession of even half of its Adirondack 
Park, it looks like poor economy to begin to 
sink in the mud the most valuable part of the 
forest it does control—to destroy with expensive 
labor public property increasing every day in 
value in order to create elsewhere private prop¬ 
erty of lesser value. 
The private land from which the timber is 
being cut will not be worth a dollar an acre 
after it is stripped, and there are thousands of 
acres of denuded land outside the park—sand 
and rocks—worthless because the forest is gone. 
That can be tried for storage purposes, if needed. 
OUR LITTLE GIRL AND HER CHICKADEE. 
Photograph by Mrs. Christman. 
It will require no amendment to permit the 
power companies to build dams here. 
The same old employment-of-labor and de- 
velopment-of-resources argument is of course 
freely used. If there is idle labor for the em¬ 
ployment of which the State should be actively 
concerned, there is no possible application of it 
that can now bring more assured profit to the 
public than the growing and planting of ever¬ 
green trees in the forest preserve from which 
the timber is being taken “three times as fast 
as it is growing.” So far as the matter of pub¬ 
lic health enters into employment, a man need 
not hesitate long between the jobs in a pulp mill 
and one at planting trees in the mountains. Al¬ 
though it takes three hundred years for the best 
timber to mature in this cold country, only a few 
years are required for growth enough to shade 
the ground. 
The floods from which we suffer do not come 
from the mountains and valleys where an ever¬ 
green forest breaks the wind and shades the 
snow from the sun, but they come from the bare 
hills where the trees have been destroyed and 
the spongy forest floor burned so that even an 
ordinary shower cannot be absorbed for slow re¬ 
lease. A dam for flood protection is excusable 
only in a bare country and is not needed within 
any protected forest. 
The business interests of the western water¬ 
shed of the Adirondack country have not been 
especially jeopardized by any of this “unpro¬ 
gressive conservation” of the forest preserve. 
By the laws of 1894, the year the constitution 
was adopted, there was established a State 
“Commission of Water Power on Black River.” 
Three men from Watertown and one from 
Beaver Falls composed this commission for ten 
years. By the revised statutes the commissioner 
of public works is now an ex-officio member, 
but of the three other members two must come 
from Jefferson county and one from Lewis 
county and must be “interested in the use, and 
owners of water power on Black River, Beaver 
River or Moose River.” Such a commission 
does not seem likely in its love for the woods 
to forget all else in the North country. 
There is a bill in the Legislature carrying an 
appropriation of $10,000 toward reforestation of 
the public lands for which we can be thankful. 
But it is intended to issue State bonds for $20,- 
000,000 toward what is called the “first stage of 
the progressive development of water storage.” 
The second stage of course will be much worse. 
The forest is at present going down in this Adi¬ 
rondack country at the rate of about 1,000 acres 
for every working day of the year. If, in spite 
of this rapid loss, the expenditure of $10,000 can 
grow forest as fast as $20,000,000 worth of con¬ 
tract dams can drown it, we have cause for joy. 
Of course it is all only a matter of business 
to the electro-hydraulic interests and our wise 
men. To mention sentiment to them is to draw 
the smile, for they can consider no factor in 
their estimates that is not plainly a part of the 
dollar. With some of us, however, it does not 
inspire to stronger feelings of patriotism and 
brotherly love to see the irreparable destruction 
of the only wild woodland left to the poor man 
of this State, for Canada and Africa are out of 
reach. How the fragrance of the forest and the 
healthfulness of its valleys will be affected by 
the stench from the steaming bottoms of storage 
ponds when the water is drawn off in the sum¬ 
mer it seems everybody should be able to under¬ 
stand, but these are matters of sentiment about 
which “it is to laugh.” The business end of the 
proposition is what alone concerns our rulers. 
The original blanket amendment, permitting 
almost everything, is now split up into different 
measures. The resolution for water storage, 
however, has a second joker that will permit the 
building of some of the roads in case the sepa¬ 
rate measure especially providing for highways 
falls by the way for any reason. Besides giving 
the use of lands in the forest preserve for the 
