present-day industrial supremacy, insures us such an immediate future as no other nation can hope to rival. Yet there is another class of considerations which demands our attention. One of our most sagacious men of affairs has lately been calling to our notice the danger of exhaustion of many of our resources upon which prosperity depends. The very rapidity of national growth of which we are assured-which we can not escape enhances the danger. By the end of the half century our vast deposits of iron will (so it is said), under the accelerated drain, have been very largely reduced. Our dwindling forests have already begun to harm the industries dependent on them. Our coal, the chief source of the power which drives the wheels of industry, can never be burned but once. Can it be that the vast rising structure of our industrial life is consuming its own foundations and is doomed to eventual downfall? That same sagacious man of affairs to whom I have just referred -Mr. James J. Hill-has pointed out the distinction between our lasting and our transitory sources of prosperity. Our farms belong in the first class; our mines in the second. Every ton of ore taken from our mines is like money drawn from a bank account; when it is used it is gone. For stable and permanent prosperity, if our national greatness is not to fall into an early decay, we must look to those sources of wealth which are capable of utilization without impairment of their productive power. There is a fundamental difference between utilization and exploitation. Mere exploitation brings temporary enrichment followed by permanent impoverishment. Exploitation is too often regarded as development. True and lasting material development depends on our learning to make the most of every natural resource. Undeveloped, our resources are but potential wealth. The greatness, prosperity, and power of our country, and with them our own individual welfare, depend on our learning how to utilize to the fullest every natural resource. Of these natural resources our forests constitute one of the greatest. Hitherto we have abused this resource shamefully. We have exploited it. With the prodigal recklessness born of abundance we have taken what we needed and destroyed much more than we have used. It is now plain that the day of reckoning is not far distant. Not our children, but we ourselves, are likely to have brought forcibly home to us the evil consequence of our shortsightedness. In this problem forestry plays an important part. A considerable portion of our land is by nature fitted to serve its best use as a source of permanent supply of wood and water. In mountainous regions wood is the only crop which the soil is capable of producing, but it is not merely in the mountains that the natural forest land is to be found. Even in our richest agricultural regions there is usually to be found more or less land too rugged, steep, wet, or infertile for agriculture. Eventually the woodlots of the American farmer will furnish us with a large part of our wood supply. The Department of Agriculture exists at Washington to promote the best use of all kinds and classes of the land which forms our greatest national asset. The problem is essentially the application of the highest intelligence and fullest scientific knowledge to the work of making our land yield its utmost. The Department of Agriculture seeks for the farmer new crops, better seed, better methods of cultivation, improved methods of breeding and caring for stock, information as to how to market his product-whatever can make his farm more profitable. In doing this it is adding enormously to the capital value of farm lands. It is no new statement, but yet it is one that can not be made too often, that wood is of basic importance in our industrial life. Other materials can not do away with the need of it. There is no great industry for which it is not important. Take the case of Kentucky. More than one-half of her area is wooded. Lumbering adds yearly to the wealth of the State an amount which places it second among her great industries. Yet this is only a beginning. Kentucky is rich in coal, but coal can not be mined without a large supply of mining timbers. In many places the coal mines have already largely drained their supply of timber, and the management of the Cumberland Mountain forests for the production of such timber will probably furnish their best employment, and will be necessary in the interest of the mines themselves. The same thing is true of the railroads. Every tie laid in the track requires on the average two trees growing in the forest to keep it there. Through the northern part of the State the production of railroad ties from timber tracts and woodlots will assuredly be one of the most profitable ways of utilizing the forest, and special studies along these two lines, mining timber and tie production, in these two different parts of the State, would therefore be of great value. By far the greater part of the lumber produced in Kentucky is hardwood, of which oak constitutes a large part. Upon the supply of this depend many industries. Distributed through the State are to be found vehicle factories, handle factories, tight and slack cooperage plants, box factories, veneer mills, and wood distillation plants. The manufacture of carriages and wagons alone represents an aggregate investment of over $4,000,000. The cooperage industry in Kentucky produces more tight barrel stock than any other State in the Union. Forest destruction is already threatening the future of these industries. Recent reports from the National Tight Barrel Stave Manufacturers' Association show that their timber today is costing nearly four and a half times what it did ten years ago. The handle factories of Kentucky use large quantities of hickory. Only this week the papers announced that the scarcity of hickory timber was the chief subject of discussion at the opening of the annual convention of the National Association of Implement and Vehicle Manufacturers. These manufacturers see the need of the supply of hickory already in sight. Industrial development throughout the South is now recognizedly dependent in large measure on the development of the water power furnished by the streams descending from the Southern Appalachians. Forest destruction has already sensibly begun to affect these water powers. A measure to establish a national forest reserve which will put a stop to this destruction and benefit at once the consumers of wood, the users of water power, the agri cultural interests affected by the floods in nudation, and the harbors and navigable inland waters now injured by the deposits of silt and sandbars, was passed by one branch of Congress at its last session, and now awaits the action of the other branch. From the forester's standpoint there can be no question that this legislation, if enacted, will beneficially affect the development of every State which borders on the reserve. It is to be hoped that this reserve will include some part of Kentucky. But the State needs more than action by the National Govern ment. If her forests are to play their proper part in contributing to her welfare, the private owner must be informed before it is too late how to make the most of what he has. The forests must not be left to take care of themselves. Trees are a crop as truly as corn and tobacco, and must be cultivated by the methods which will bring the largest yield. Of these methods the ordinary owner, particularly the small owner, is ignorant. He is ignorant also of how to dispose of his property to the best advantage. The large owner can generally be depended upon to take care of himself. A wise State forest policy might well begin with a study of existing forest conditions and existing markets, which would throw light on the important problems of management. Such studies. have already been made in other States, notably New Hampshire and California, in coöperation with the Forest Service of the National Government, which stands ready to coöperate with any State by sending its experts to conduct such a study. After the study is made the way is clear for formulation of the policy which will best serve the interests of the State. The last resort, public opinion, the intelligent interest of the citizens, is the force which, if brought to bear, will work the greatest good for the forests of Kentucky. To inform and strengthen this interest in forest problems every channel of information should be opened. This campaign of education is needed to secure certain definite, practical results. The essence of the matter lies in a nutshell. Over one-half of Kentucky is wooded, and most of this land can have no permanent value except to produce wood, which the manufacturing interests of the State can not do without. The question is, shall much of the State be permitted to become waste, and worse than waste, land, untaxable, stripped and abandoned and pouring down ruin from its gullied and washing slopes, and shall much more produce only a scant and inferior yield of material worthless for the wood-working industries, and hardly worth cutting, or shall every acre of the commonwealth contribute its share to the general welfare and its full profit to the owner, yielding its present harvest of mature timber without injury to the younger growth, and intelligently directed to the production in largest possible quantity of the best paying and most needed kinds of wood? |