New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1900-10-07
STATE HOSPITAL AND FOREST PREsERTE


Some of the people who are anxious to have
the State purchase tract Of the most expensive
land in the whole Adirondack region for the pro-
posed consumptives' hospital, instead of using
land already owned by the State, have made a
discovery. It is nothing less than that the Con-
stitution forbids the use for the hospital of any
of the lands of the forest preserve Conse-
quently new wild land must be bought at Big
Clear Lake We do not understand them to
say that the Constitution forbids the purchase
Of cheaper lands than those belonging to Paul
Smith. but that it compels the acquisition OF
new lands somewhere, and that is considered
sufficient in these days of extravagant govern
ment to justify any lavishness sentimental
grounds
It will strike the average man as curious that
the Constitution should forbid the State to use
its own wild lands for a camp, hospital, fish
hatchery or anything else appropriate TO their
situation, but such seems to be the meaning of
the Constitution. and it should not be evaded.
The same bungling lawyer who in drafting the
section made scientific forestry impossible in the
forest preserve seems also to have shut the
State from all other beneicent and appropriate
use of its own property. The Constitution reads:
after acquired constituting the forest preserve,
as now fixed by law, shall be forever kept as
WILD forest lands. Ihey snail not De leaSeQ, SolQ
or exchanged or be taken by any corporation,
public private. nor shall the timber thereon
be sold, removed or destroyed.
If the forest preserve must remain wild
forest land" and none of it's timber can be
moved it is apparently impossible to convert
any of it into hospital grounds. But equally
impossible would it appear to use any adjoining
lands to be acquired by the State for such
hospital This Constitution seems to work both
Aoe t. %loc0
who invoke it as an excuse for buying land un-
necessarily, for there are eligible State lands
outside the forest preserve not inhibited to the
hospital by the Constitution. Chapter $50 of
the Laws of 1893 defines the forest preserve
thus:
The forest preserve shall include the lands now
owned or hereafter acquired by the State within
the counties OF Clinton Except the towns of
Altoona and Dannemora), Delaware Essex,
Franklin, Fulton, Hamilton Herkimer, Lewis,
Oneida, Saratoga, St Lawrence, Warren, Wash
ington Greene Ulster and Sullivan except n
lands within the limits of any village or city
and o. lands, not wild lands acquired by the
State on foreclosure Of mortgages made to the
Commissioners for loaning certain moneys of
the United States usually called the United
States deposit fund.
Chapter 20 of the Laws of 1900 re-enacts this
provision. So the forest preserve, as fixed by
law at the time the Constitution of 1894 was
adopted, and as fixed by law now. which must
"be forever kept as wild forest lands" with no
stick of timber cut, includes not merely the land
at this moment owned by the State within the
area described, but all lands hereafter acquired
by the State" except the two classes of village
and mortgaged lands which have no relation to
the present problem. That provision is absolute
and general. 1t does not seem TO leave any
lOophole for the State to acquire land in that
region for a hospital anything else except
the extension of the forest preserve. If that is
the correct Interpretation the State cannot ac-
quire a hospital site a. Big Clear Lake, and the
instant it acquires the land there that land be-
comes inyiolable a part of the forest pre-
serve IT would also follow that the provision
OF the law establishing the hospital which
authorizes the Forest Preserve Board to set
apart one thousand acres of the land now
owned by the State for the purposes of the hos
pital In addition to the land otherwise acquired
is unconstitutional. It is not clear that the
Forest Preserve Board has power to do any
thing but acquire lands within the borders of
the Adirondack park or that the Legislature
can authorize IL TO "set apart" for any purpose
or otherwise dispose of them.
The law, however provides an easy escape
from ali embarrassment. 1t is to be noted that
IL makes a special exception Of two towns In
Clinton Comfy, with the evident purpose Of
leaving the State free to improve land now
owned hereafter acquired there Those
TO have been set apart as a proper tract for