Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1884-02-06
AWAKENING AT LAST.

record in that regard) fully ten years ago
began, and ever since has, agitated the
forestry question. Unfortunately for it
and the State, it has been impossible to
rouse California legislators TO a consider
alton of the important subject Every
year the magnitude and augmenting seri-
business of forest destruction and forest
preservation have been urged upon the at
tention of legislators, but nothing what.
ever has been done. 1t has been found to
be even impossible 10 secure ordinary legis-
lative inquiry.
During the whole of this period, extend
ing over more than decade, the San
Francisco daily press, without exception,
if we are not greatly mistaken, has treated
the whole subject with contempt. With.
out the acquiescence, if not the active aid,
of San Francisco, welding as she does
such large vote in our legislative coun-
ellis, no action could be secured. That
city and her delegates were in all the past
too deeply absorbed in purely selfish affairs
to rise to the level of great State ques-
ton. The record OF the decade fails to
disclose any proper interest manifested by
her in such subjects of broad State i'm
portance as that under consideration. The
interior press, which has been quite a
unit in favor of early preventive activity to
check the denudation of our mountain
slopes and the destruction of young forest
growth by fire, stock and the AK of the
woodman, has had every reason, therefore,
to be discouraged.
Now, however, in an "off" year, the
San Francisco press suddenly awakens to
the vast Importance of the question, and
enters upon its discussion with a nervous
vigor that will probably be entirely ex.
pended by the assembling of the Legisla-
ture year hence, We are just now fairly
flooded with accounts, in the columns re.
ferred to, of the exceeding great danger of
forest destruction and the serious oonse.
quences to the entire State. We are told, as
If the matters were new and the facts those
OF recent discovery, that forest destruction
means increased temperature, less frequent
but sudden and disastrous rainfals, swollen
streams or wholly dry ones, such alteration
in climate as to threaten Che whole scheme
of agriculture, and the transformation of
fertile valleys into arid wastes. We are
told with pathetic touches of the sad con-
sequences Of forest stripping upon the
shores of the Baltic of the vast loss of
life and property by foods upon the
Rhine, consequent upon denudation of
wooded slopes on its headwaters Of the
alarm that prevails in New York, and the
rough hand Of preservation that State has
suddenly laid upon the Adirondack region.
We are given tables testifying with all the
convincing force there is in any array Of
figures to the intimate relation between
rainfall and forest culture, between timber
growth and the extremes Of heat and cold,
between the misunderstanding foliage Of
trees and the capacity Of the soil to endure
tillage, and so on toward the end Of an APP.
parently endless chapter.
Late as is this awakening of the metro.
politan press to the Importance of subject
of absorbing and vital interest, it is graft
flying TO know that it has taken place at
all. Had there been manifest one-tenth
the activity ten years ago the good that
might have been accomplished to this tine,
and the saving to public lands of vast tim
Der values, would have been all but i'm.
measurable There ia nothing however,
to be gained now by regrets, but every.
thing by present and continued agitation.
The RECORD. UNION long since exhausted
the whole subject Of authoritative citation
on this subject. There ia absolutely moth.
ing new to be said upon it no new facts
to be brought forward no new ideas to be
presented. All that remains to be done is
to demand of the next Legislature. as the
RECORD UNION did of the last, action with
view OF repairing damage done, by slim
ulating arboriculture, preventing further
destruction by stringent regulations, with
punitive consequences for their infringe
ment, and the creation of large-minded,
philosophical commission to examine into
and report all the facts.