The morning journal-courier., 1908-02-22
A CRITICAL ISSUE.

The difficulties which have been en- countered by the proposed purchase i by the national government of the Southern Appalachian and White Mountain forest ranges have been of a character to defeat ones understand ing The proposal is so simple in it's far-reaching effect and so important from an economical point of view that for it to provoke either indifference or open opposition on the part of con gress constitutes one of the surprises of the current year. President Roose- welt has devoted considerable attention to the subject and has made it a mat ter of consideration in one of lis mes sages to congress but without effect upon the speaker of the house of rep resentatives. Mir. Cannon. He has from the first offered his earnest and stub born opposition to even a favorable committee report. It is well believed 
 that the Speakers opposition accounts for the failure of Congressman Hen rvs promotion to the chairmanship of the committee on agriculture, that gentleman being heartily in favor of the passage of the bill The opposition of the Speaker also accounts for the presence on that committee of ma jority of members who live west of the Mississippi river and who can with greater difficulty be brought to realize the pressing importance of the bill, even though it has once passed the senate
 The States which have a direct economic interest In the purchase of these forest lands are Maryland. Vir- ginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, >.South Carolina, Georgia. Alabama, Kentucky. Tennessee and every New England State with the possible excep- tion of Rhode Island. It has been the attitude of Mir. Cannon that these States should act together in the pur- chase of these lands in order to protect and regulate the stream flow which in the growing denudation of the forests increases the danger from violent floods. He has even gone so far as to v~of~ l,a of ho riD of the congress to appropriate money for the purchase of State lands, con- stitutional question which will shortly be argued before the judiciary commit tee of congress. The impracticability of securing the joint action of the vari sous States interested is obvious. They are not the only States interested In the regulation of the stream flow Every State in the Union is interested upon the sound doctrine that the con- cern of one is the concern of all. The national government already spends annually millions of dollars to deepen and widen the waterways of the coun- try and it is the belief of many army engineers that if the trouble was , studied from the standpoint of the ori- gin of the need for dredging, that is at the source of the water supply, the government would make enormous 1 savings in that connection. Nor is the fact overlooked by observing men that the rapid denudation of these timber i lands if kept up means the loss of all timber reserves within twenty years. Professor Swain of the Massachu- i setts Institute of Technology argues i the question from the point of view ! of water power for manufacturing i purposes. He says: "The importance of water power to New England need 1 hardly be emphasized New England has few natural resources; it has no mines of precious metals, no copper, l coal or agriculture, but it has its for
 ests, streams and manufactures. The
 manufactures of New England and all
 the large towns grew up because of
 the water powers. Along the streams
 draining the area of the proposed na-
 tfonal forest in the White Mountains 1t is estimated that 250. 900 horsepower
 Is developed and there is perhaps an equal amount undeveloped. If our streams become irregular, steam power
 must be used more and more to sup
 plement the water power, and every
 day the steam power is an added ex-
 pense to the mills" MT. Lee of North
 Carolina, an expert electrical engineer ] speaks of the movement from the
 point of view of the Southern States
 interested. He says: "We are furnish.
 ing power to twenty-six towns. seven. ! weight cotton mills and various smal manufacturing enterprises. Our worl
 has been going on only six years. IT
 that time we have had to make oul
 plants heavier-that is sections o
 dams larger in order to take care o
 the enormous floods year after year.
 a1r. Leighton. chief hydrographer c