The Brookings register. [volume] (Brookings, Brookings County, S.D.) 1903-1971, 1915-09-02

growth OF the forests. 1t is comforting
to know that Alaska and Porto Rice
have 1877, 000, 900 acres of national for
ests.
The American people, with their
usual absence Of concern, are paying
little attention to the source of sup
ply of necessary wood for the future,
True, the remarkable advance in the
price of lumber and other products OF
the forests has been met in a measure
by steel and concrete construction,
while coal has been distributed for
fuel and is being replaced by oil. But
both of these latter commodities fail
to show that they have an ~inexhausti-
BILE supply.
must not be lost sight of in the pres
sure for timber reconnaissance and
sales, the degeneration if agricultural
lands and other urgent administrative
work" says the report of the Forester
for 1913. He adds: Eat least 5000
900 acres of denuded land, capable of
growing half a million feet of timber
annually, await artificial restocking"
Further, the national forests contain
1,175 water sheds, which supply the
municipalities, 324 water power pro-
jects, 1926 irrigation projects, aside
from, Tho many nthnr Ontci1n nOUar
and irrigation projects, which are fed
by watersheds within the forests. Pub
lie consideration is now being given to
flood control and requests from many
western cities for special measures to
protect their municipal water supply,
the concern expressed by irrigation as
sociations in Colorado and elsewhere,
lest even regulated cutting in the ma
tional forests may reduce stream flow,
and the rapid rate at which unused
reservoir and power sites in the for
ests are being developed-all strongly
the forests is water production. Re
forestation is essential to the effective
discharge of this function.
The government at it's best enters
only occasionally upon constructive
enterprises. If left to the federal ma
chinery it is likely that the grains
of the west would remain in the fields
for want of mills to grind it into flour;
the wool would remain on the back of
the sheep, because there would be
only the spinning wheels to the
family cloth. Although, as above stat
ed, there are 5000, 900 acres of denud-
ed land capable of producing
a great growth of timber,
yet the total area of sowing
and planting in the work of reforesta-
ton during 1913 amounted to but 90
446 acres. But even this is encourag-
ing, as it shows a determination among
officials in the government to carry
this work forward, and sooner or later
it may be that congress itself will
wake up to the fact that it has been
overlooking something.
AS early as 1857 horticultural and
agricultural associations in Wisconsin
appointed committees to report upon
the result of forest destruction, and
laws encouraging tree planting were
passed in the following six years in a
number of western and eastern states,
designed toward the formulation of a
forest policy. Arbor Day was insti-
tuted in 1872, and in the following
year congress passed the first timber
culture act. States and societies
preached the question, but the opinion
remained fixed in the public mind that
the forests of the country were mex
haustible. The great forests of the
eastern states, disappeared, and very
recently Michigan and Wisconsin,
once thought to possess a wealth of
pine that would last for all time, have
surrendered their supremacy. Former
Secretary of Agriculture James L. Will
son in his last report found comfort in
the fact that "one-ffth of the stand
ing timber of the United States was
not only held and protected in the ma
tional forests, but also put to use in
methods which will mean increasing
production through growth and habits
for all time" He also points with par
donable pride to the fact that the pub
lie "is fully awake to the Importance
of preventing forest fires and substitute
ing forest management for forest ex-
p~loitation." This is hopeful, yet if we
are to continue to have merchantable
trees in this country, something more
is necessary than is being done to
grow them, since, as had been shown
above, the present rate of cutting is
three times the annual growth of the
forests of the United States.
Secretary Wilson, in reviewing his
work in the Agricultural Department
at the close of his sixteen years of SER
vice, declared that it was difficult for