Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1908-10-25

II
in Maine or Minnesota woods:
a lighted pipe, and match dropped with careless
sigh of content soft leaves and tangled
undergrowtlM a flicker, famed to flame a hiss
and roar.-and the Fire Friend leaps IN triumph
from the ground to assai the forest giants, and
DEFY an army to put him down before he has
torn vast black swathes, costing millions, in the
primeval forest.
That is the story of the forest fire, that and
the spark from the laboring locomotive which
decade or so ago cost even little New Jersey one
million one hundred and thirty thousand dol
lars in single year. The preservation of our
forests is an imperative business necessity,
declared Roosevelt in notable message to
Congress. And again, s. The great part played
by them in the Great on and maintenance of
the national wealth is more fully realized
than ever
Possibly: but it took long time to get it
into peoples heads that forests not only repre-
sented potential wealth, but that the fires
destroying them destroyed also future forests
altered climate for the worse, and reduced
crops in startling fashion.
Within quite recent years Michigan was a
great forest State. and the protective influence
SO given made the wheat crop enormous. In
those days Michigan's forests supplied the
country as far west as Texas. Now. thanks
to disregard of scientific methods and ire
mendous forest fires. the State actually i'm
ports lumber. and consequent on the disap-
pearance of her forests, and in the ten years
following 1903. her wheat crop sank from
thirty-five million bushels to eight million
bushels.
But State biologists and foresters have
done much to bring about change in public
opinion. Clifford Pinchot, Chief Forester
of the United States. has shown that the yield
of timber from burned tracts is only one
third of what it would be if protected from fire.
The fire too will in one hour destroy Natures
patient work of centuries: for it may take
three hundred years for a forest to accumulate
depth of one foot of rich soil by means of de-
cayed vegetation.
Some Fearful Visitations
NEW YORK will not forget fearful vista
ton in the early summer of 1903. There
had been practically no rain in fiftyone days
and thousands of square miles of magnificent
woodland were waiting only for spark to burst
into a sea of flame. That spark came. and
cost 'etween three and half and four millions
in hard cash The mere cost of fighting the
awful monster it raised was one hundred and
seventy-fiv thousand dollars, and nothing but
providential heavy rains saved the entire re-
gion from annihilation after six hundred
thousand acres had been destroyed
All remember the terrible forest fires of Wis
consin which wiped out village after village;
and also those which involved forty eight town.
ships in Southeastern Michigan in two million-
dollar conhagration that destroyed one hum
dred and thirty-eight human beings. Indeed
IL IS little more imam ten years ago llldt over
four hundred persons met death by fire in the
magnificent forests of Minnesota.
And yet there seemed to he no public spirit
on the question. "A citizen on a jury" said
one despairing authority. will send man to
prison for long term for burning two hun
dred-dollar barn. Yet he escapes scot free if
through criminal carelessness or sheer malice
he destroys two hundred thousand dollars
worth of standing TIMBER"
Forest fires had grown SO frequent that peo-
pie looked upon them as inevitable. 1t was
this hopeless feeling which in one year cost one
thousand lives and rendered fifteen thousand
homeless in Northern Michigan. Wisconsin,
and Minnesota. 1t is a result of this apathy
that now obliges Michigan to look elsewhere