The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1895-07-17
A GREAT CRIME.

LIE INGOhAEOO O&OANDEhlNO OF
FORESTS.
To The Representative:
The world over-excapt in America
timber is conserved by the government
Nowhere else is natures great storehouse
depleted and swept clean by ignorant
minds and misdirected hands. Who,
that has visited France, has failed to OBJ
serve the artificial forests planted in
lines as straight as an army dressing
ranks, or to notice with bewilderment
those dancing diagonals of timber open
ing away from car-windows like lanes of
dryads, or corn-rows glimpsing in be
witching green? On the other side of the
t Pyrenees the Spanish peasant carefully
cuts the seasons growth of twigs from
fruit-bearing trees and transforms them
into charcoal for fuel, the sticks Of which
are the size of lead-pencils.
The German forester, before he can Sc
cure position under government in the
Schwarzwald, must know what soil nour-
ishes the huge fibres of the forest, what
rocks are their companions, what enc
mics come on foot or wing, or bore 81
lently at the roots. He must know why
tree dies-must learn to read the pal
lor of a leaf, the signs of dropping life
about stalwart stem. He Is practiced
geologist and botanist, turning his
knowledge to account. But the Amer
lean is clearing mad. He must chop to
live. He is mighty man of muscle,
co. rx,;&
and arm. In Northern Wisconsin and
Michigan he makes bonfires in the fields
out of his abundance of timber, while
his prairie-stranded brother in Mime
sofa and Dakota burns twisted hay
through an almost arctic winter. Here
and there through the primeval forests,
the lumberman cuts rude paths Some
times he is wise i nwoodcraft, but his
lands are his own, and owes no duty
to future generations. His grandchildren
will burn coal, or move South in win
ter. He leaves the fuel, the waste, from
this work, for kindlings in the broken
solitude behind him, and chance spark
from locomotive passing in a whirl of
dead leaves, or the premeditated deviltry
of ignorance, sets the fire which DESTROYS
thousands of feet of timber where he has
cut hundreds, for the dead fall feeds the
flames.
In the far West, the lines of transcon-
tinental railroads run through incalcul-
able waste. Over the Rockies, over the
Selkirks, over the Gold Range, the Cana
dian Pacific is girdled and guarded by
ghosts. Gray as the past, dead as Adam,
these phantom forests lift their bones as
bleached and saples as the skeletons Of
our once countless herds of buffalo that
have passed into tradition.
The above excerpt is taken from an
article in the Century Magazine, entitled
Where the Teakwood Grows"
What food for thought there is in the
above. Nowhere else in the civilized
world is there such reckless squandering
of Natures bountiful forests by fire and
avarice, as in these United States
Not alone are our coal mines, oil and gas
fields, in irresponsible hands that manip-
ulate them, without regard for the flu
ture, but the forests, too are being laid
waste in wantom ruthlessness. Aside
from the waste of the lumber itself, there
are other things to be thought of in this
connection. Up in the mountains among
these giant forests, our waterways find
their birth. Flowing on, the little rill
becomes a torrent, fields are irrigated,
mills turned, and thousand blessings
flow from this source.
Destroy the forest, and, in a great
measure, you destroy the water supply
Many a mill wheel has stopped turning
because of the loss in water caused in just
this way. The forests are Natures stor-
age basins. Take them away, and the re-
suit is floods in spring and fall, and
drought in summer. Climatic changes
can be brought about also, and the en-
tire complexion of a section of country
altered. While our lawmakers are busy
with river and harbor steals, tariff tink-
ering, ETC., the forests are left to take
care of themselves. If our senators could
stop a moment in their mad haste to
serve the sugar trust, the whisky trust,
ETC., and give this matter a little atten-
ton, we would feel that they had not
lived Tin Washington entirey in vain.
AMOS w. RIDEOUT.
Z st. Paul St., Boston, Mass.