The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1878-05-02
Cultivation Of Forests.

George May Powell, Chairman of For
est Tree Committee:
/ No forest heresy is more common
than that farmers are the only ones in
| terested in the subject of silva-culture.
Every town interested in manufactures
and commerce has deep and literally
vital concern in the question. The in
| calculable influence of woodlands on the
regulation of the rainfall is one OF food
and clothing and cash to communities
whose business relates directly to skill
ed labor and to trade with interior
towns. A proper arboreal distribution
is in fact the only means of so conserv-
ing hygrometric conditions as to make
the streams reliable for inland naviga-
tional purposes and for hydraulic pow
er to drive machinery. 1t follows,
therefore, the life of these towns and
cities being these elements of transit
and of skilled industry, that jewellers in
cities and towns, as well as the rural
population, are deeply interested in
forests. There has often been too much
of over-straining the financial nerves
of States and communities to build rail-
ways, where water transit, requiring
only one-eighth the traction of moving
freight on steam-cars, would have been
sufficient. Slack-water improvements,
similar to that practiced on
few of our streams, and on many of
those in Europe, would give ample
freight and passenger transit where rail-
way in many cases is little, if any, bet
ter. This improvement would at the
same time give very numerous and well
distributed water-powers for mills and
factories. The wholesale deforestation
of the regions through which these
streams flow has robbedsthem of that
equableness absolutely indispensable to
their being of use for these navigational
and manufacturing purposes. They are
vexed by two spirits of destruction, both
of which are deadly enemies to these
great industries and interests. In
the stormy seasons of the year they be-
trollable as the torrent-demon holds
wild revelry along the valleys. Through
the same cause, also, their beds become
so "silted" as to be INSTRUCTED by shall
lows and bars, made up of precious soil
robbed from the upland. Anon, the
rivers sleep through influence of rain
fall being withheld till they become too
feeble to bear even a canoe on their
bosoms, at the very time when the ship
or the steamer should have free path
way there. The drought-demon now
has sway, and the keels of commerce
may not pass that way, nor the hum of
the lathe or the loom add their
undertone to the music of skilled
labor. Thus things go on till the
river is ruined, not only for the present
but the futnre, unless the children are
wiser than their fathers. If they invite
the Queen of the Silva to resume her
Throne, she will lay gentle, but po-
quent and gentle showers will take the
place of furious rains coming at longer
intervals, and the rivers will once more
be really available both to navigation
and to manufactures. The rise of these
interests means the rise of cities de-
pendent on them; their waning means
the fall of such cities. The forest is the
only influence which can save the
stream, which is the soul of these inter-
ests. A practical proof of this philoso-
phy,i in respect to the destruction of nav
igation, may been seen at Bladensburg,
Md. There the student of this subject
may see the remains of wharf on high
dry ground, yards away from the near
est margin of the stream. At that
wharf, generation or so ago,
ships that crossed the sea are said to
have loaded and unloaded cargoes
Now, except at high water, a skiff could
hardly float there. These things being
true as proved by the experience of both
the old world and the new, it follows
that very vital interests of
minor towns and cities, as
well as of the agriculturist, are in
volved in the relation of forest to rain
fall. In former paper we tried to show
something of the extent to which these
rural interests, which are the chief stock
in trade of the cities, through damage
to plant life suffer. All these facts and
arguments eliminate intensely to prove
that the great trade-centers which thus
suffer on a still larger scale should rouse
and act. Boards of Trade and Cham
bers of Commerce can not afford to fail
to demand that State Legislatures and
the General Government come to the res
cue. Laws should pass providing for
organized forest conservation by the sew
eral States as well as the General Gov
eminent. The scientists representing
and conducting the measures of such
conservation would naturally meet in
general and special conventions to COM
pare notes, and to provide for union,
cooperative effort where such effort
was needed. 1t is high time to be broad
awake on the question. The time for
dreaming and theorizing is past. Ac-
ton, action, action is what is wanted.