The Fulton County news. [volume] (McConnellsburg, Pa.) 1899-current, 1907-08-01
Trees Are Money.
BY EDWARD EVERETT HALE, in
Christian Register.

40 IL DtlltI lOI tnG lNdIIOH lO nave
a million dollars in gold laid by in
kegs in the basement of the Treasury
or to have a million dollars Of wood
land which In thirty years will be
worth FIVE times what IL is worth
now? You meet very few people
who understand or remember that
every European nation now relies
largely for its annual revenue on its
forests
Our people do not choose to re-
member-perhaps they do not like
to remember--that forest, from the
nature of the case, can be taken care
of by Nation or State as It can
not be taken care of by an individual.
In the first place, the individual
wants to see his profit within Ave or
ten years at the outside The Ma
tion, because it never dies, can put
forward the question of profit as no
thrifty man dares to do.
Nations do, not always choose to
take this view. But the eternal law
remains, "You cannot have your
cake and eat your cake" See what
happens to such nations. Remember
the days when Solomon built his
temple from the cedars OF Lebanon.
Go to Lebanon to-day and find that
the forests of Lebanon" have
dwindled down to a few hundred
trees. And then look north and
south and east and west from. Leb-
anon to see that the very regions
which produced such men as Solo
mon and David are now, as one of
them said, peeled and stripped, that
they are regions to which beggars
cannot be paid to emigrate. Take
J Asia Minor-minor with ven-
geance! Here is a region which in
its time supported such cities as
Ephesus and Tarsus and Antioch--a
region whose tributes made up such
wealth as seems fabulous the
wealth, indeed, of Croesus. And this
Asia Minor is now a barbarous prov
ince through which adventurous
travellers work their way with diff
Guilty, and where they speculate with
doubt as to what was the site of one
and another of those treasures of
the world. For the people did
not preserve their forests nor pre-
tend to do so. They killed the bird
which laid the golden egg The
mountains were shorn of their beau
ty and it was more than beauty which
was destroyed. The rivers which
had made the valleys fertile became
the mountain torrents, dry in sum-
mer and overfull in winter, which
carried devastation in their freshets,
and yet which failed the valleys when
they needed most the treasures of
rain. The history of the decline of
civilization in any region which has a
written history is the history of the
destruction of its forests.
II in New England to-day you send
to a carpenter. and bid him make
you a cabinet or table made from
that white pine which was the glory
of our forests in the days when Paul
Jones fought the Scraps, the car
penter will tell you that it will cost
you about as much to use white pine
as to use mahogany Smaller and
smaller have become the pine trees
which you cut down for your annual
service. There were days when your
foresters did not touch a tree with
the AK unless the tree were 200
years old To-day they can use the
little trees for this and that service,
though they should not be three
inches in diameter.
Here is our own deforested State
of Massachusetts,. For her railroads
and hospitals and other necessities
she has incurred large debts. not
payable for many years. But these
debts are provided for by the sink.
ing funds which grow and grow as
the years pass by. And, when the
debts mature, money will be ready
Yes, such has been the foresight of
our Government. But think of the
gain to Massachusetts, If from year
to year she were investing such funds
where she is sure of the great alli-
ance of nature; in planting her bare,
worn-out wilderness with the forests
which will be almost invaluable in a
hundred years. Men die and they
cannot make provisions for what
comes after them. But States live.
Nature is always kind, and a State
can invest with perfect security in its
forest lands.
Such policy as this has com.
mended itself almost of course to the
great States of New York and Penn
sylvania. They have learned to rely
upon the forests of the future, as
Prussia does and Bavaria and Wur-
temberg. The United States as a
Nation need not be afraid of the same
policy.
1t is not impossible that the FIVE
States, watered by the Merrimac and
the Connecticut, the Saco and the
Androscoggin, may be called upon to
unite In the annual expense of pre-
serving the White Mountain district
To preserve the water power of three
great rivers is duty of this genera
tion, and this water power can be
preserved only by preserving the for
ests at their headwaters.
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