The Oregon daily journal., June 07, 1908, Page 28, Image 28

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PORTLAND, OREGON, SUNDAY MORNING, JUNE 7 1903
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ernmentO3-notontrolHne-ftlftHo1iiiril)et
aupply. Tha forest service will endeavor to se
cure the-money and power to extend the service,
and will push tho work of reforesting the de
nuded timber lands. But it is utterly beyond
the possibility of the service to- meet the situs
tion and prevent serious trouble One hope en
tertained ia the Appalachian forest An effort
will be made to nromote the srrowth. them.
"There is a changing sentiment througSouli
the country. People are beginning' to see thata
the right to use resources does not carry with u
tho right to destroy them. The forest serricb
Dncle Sam May
Be as Bald as His
Eagle when This
Generation is old
A TREELESS LAND in twenty,
years Uncle Sam to be as bald as
single generation. - "
sounds like a national nightmare
yet Wis as"true as any prophecy that has
ever been made on the basis of a strictly
scientific and mathematical calculation.
' No man, unless he was born that way
or carried the troubles inherent in the. care '
of 'millions, ever goes entirely bald. And
no land that hasn't started out on the basis
of a Sahara or is not exploited by lumber
barons ever becomes quite treeless, i
But a' thoroughly miserable condition
of general depilation can be very speedily
attained by the man who hasn't a care in
his head for the hair that 's 'on top of it; and
a very complete Condition of bareness can
be spread over any country wttnw twenty
years by a nation mat ts warning as naru at
deforestation as the American people are j
working iust nowi
; The. deprivation, the want, the hunger,
i which are the forerunners of all famines,
1 are already upon us. " The famine which will
be upon us in twenty years is already star
ing in at our inviting door.
G'dord Pinchot, the' national forester,
the famine's appalling eyes, now tells us Gafc&t2foaBe-&e'
something of tts hideous aspects.- .
This ,' conference, which' held : the attention of
the nation' for three days,, was called to deal en
tirely with the , subject 'of conserving ' our na
tional resources. . , "
That conference . of governors : and others;
wholly unprecedented, was an equally desperate
endeavor, to find some way by which the nation's "
remaining .resources could s be conserved. Men t
like ? Carnegie.t llarriman ' and . James J. Hill,
Secretary Wilson, of the 'Department of AgrU
culture, and John Mitchell, former president of ,
theUnited Mine Workers, joined in with lead
ing state ; executives ' in, efforts to suggest -ways
"andxmeansi'Tfdr'joint action by the states and
the national government." ' ' ' ;
Of . all the resources whose?" exhaustion is j
. most. imminent, with -consequences most wide-
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spread attaching to that exhaustion, none sur
passed in importance the nation's timber. For
upon the timber depends not only countless in
dustries many of them employing Americans
by the hundred thousand but the water courses
of the land, with their alternating droughts and
floods ; the inland water-borne transportation
and vital features of our commerce with peoples
abroad, and the very fertility of the land itself .
00 important appeared the questions relat
will make additional efforts to educate-the
people.
"Only a little timeonly a very-Kttle time
has passed since those who were dealing with
the greatest pine region ever lumbered- the for
ests in Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota
declared them inexhaustible. t ,
"Exactly the same language- is being used
now with regard to the great forests of tno
Pacific alone. , And yet the whit pine isvsai
Ing to the natural resources of the country, and ' nearly gone that 25 per cent, less wood was cut
u luuuuicui ure uougcn uwuacuig uiw louus" lass year xnan was cuu iu. iwu. ; j
tries, that the Governors named a committee to t "The limit has come to these-'inexhaustible;
form a permanent organization to conserre the resources Not only are-the forests as a whole'
great natural heritage of the nation, as well as ; being depleted, but some of the most important!
to deal with other publio questions arising from are already gone, "
nr
1
-Woodman, spar that treat ,
Touch not alngle bougb. i
' In youth It sheltered me,.,
- And I'U protect it now-Morrls.
kHE generation - which has - doomed the
countrjrs trees, the generation , which
has most mercilessly hacked them oft
the land, is the generationilHtt most
sentimentally spouted those too familiar lines -among,
the heroics of its ochool jdays. , '
And, too, it is the generation whose Gover- ,
nore,-for the first time since the forming of the '
nation, but recently responded, together with
other prominent men of . the land, to the call -of
the President : for- a - conf erence? aiming to
retrieve "some of . the . weU-nigh irretrievable "
losses: entailed by- our - national wastefulness, .
time to time and affecting the relation of state
and nation. But of all the subjects discussed
at the White House during that memorable
May gathering, no need of the day was dwelt
upon with greater force and insistence than the
need of fo&tering our forests.
For years the voice of Gifford Pinchot cried
out amid an ever-spreading wilderness, while
lumber thieves ' and railway pirates ': looted the
Jand of forests that .would enrich European
kingdoms; stole" homestead lots-great enough in
the aggregate to make other kingdoms, and pre
pared themselves for America's Senate or Amer
ica's ; jails and sometimes f or i both2 according
to the extent to which their piracies should find
them out.
But, in the end, he has made for himself a
position where-his hand can ttay some of the
, , axes and where his voice can be heard by all of
the people. ' T
He' " .the - bitter -gist of what he has to
say: The absolute and reckless disregard of the
sentiment, -so grandly Vuttered by the boys who
N are the men of today, has already converted
'that insincere, unselfish sentiment into the dir
est, most urgent expression of our need for self
preservation. .In slaying our trees, we are slay
ing ourselves by flood, by. storm, by drought, by
heat,, by cold and by hunger.
-y v . DANCER IS' GREAT
" f In twenty years," said Mr- Pinchot, ths
; . timber supply in the. Ignited States on govern-
Nment reserves and private holdings, at the pres-',-
ent rate of cutting, will be exhausted, although
it is "possible that the growth - of . that period '
. might defer the arrival of the f ammo another
five years. - -
- "Danger : of - the situation should - not be
underestimated. The United States u&ta more
. timber than any other country, and every man,
woman and child will be affected,
"About one-fifth" of the forest area . of the
VAST BARREN' WASTES
"Consider the great northeasternrpmebeTti
Today barren, worthless wastes replace millions
of acres of what were ouce the richest, most
valuable timber lands to be found on the conti
nent, except, possibly, certain lands -on theJ?a
cifio coast. , ' ' '
"For years past more money ha been, paid
by the state of Michigan to advertise for sale
lands that were enormously valuable while the
white tine was on them than the lands' are nowi
worth according to the prices received in the J
rales. Instead of behig' almost ;the most pro-l
ductive timber lands in North America, those.'
vast tracts are now absolute deserts, pauperized, '
beggars, a charge upon the state.' - , 1
It is a fearful picture that the national
forester presents of the years of the" famine '
that is to come that is already at hand: ; . ;
"With absolute certainty, a very t'evere tim- i
ber famine is approaching indeed, is already!
beginning to be felt. .The business disturbances r
of last year interrupted, for, a little time, the!
rapid rise in the price of , lumber ;.but that rise ;
must begin again, and soon. . i
"Theforest service has demonstrated thaj'
we use 100,000,000,000 feet of lumber year; f
and . we : have only 2,00000,000,000 ? feet of )
timber in existence:; No nation la the world de-;
penda upon itstreesv as- we do; Europe gets '
along with 60 feet per person; we use 450 feet.'
'We are over sevenfold more dependent.
' "Every man, woman and child in tho Unite J
States is going to'feel the famines There i no
industry, no corporation, no individual, no fona
nf ar.tivitv in our life which-' can escape bein?
I affected by the size and condition of the forests."
."' A timber famine is no5 a famine of timlf-r
alone. 'It is also a water famine, a food f am in
even a transportation "t famine. In Jb'rarHT",
whole counties have been -depopulated' becan
iha mountains, robbed of their trees, let ti.i
lowlands lie in desert. In China, vast provinc
vatelyl owned timber lands are better than the h are annually the field of battle between tha pca-
government reserves, as a general rule, the gat-' (continued- l-Nii rAOL