The Cordova daily times., 1921-02-07
CHINA PLIGHT
 CAUSED THRU
 FOREST WASTE

The world-particularly the United States-is called upon today to save
 the population of great sections of China from starvation. Two seasons alternate drought and floods during which no crops were harvested have reduced the populace to a pitiable state.
 The direct cause of this disaster is the floods and droughts mentioned
 above, but what is not so generally
 recognized is that the floods and droughts are the result of the de- struction of the vast forests which once covered the watersheds of China's great rivers.
 China holds a unique position as the
 only civilized country which has per sistently destroyed it's forests. What
 forestry has done in other countries stands out in bold relief against the background of China, whose hills have been largely stripped clean of all vegetation and whose soil is al
 most completely at the mercy of the floods. Trees have been left only where they could not be reached.
 Almost the sole use for lumber is the
 manufacture of collins. The heavy 2 3 inch blanks for this purpose are so scarce, and the cost of transporting them by coolies is so high, that they
 sell for $2 or $3 apiece.
 Nowhere in the world is the forest | cleaned off down to the very soil as
 it is in China. When the trees are gone the saplings the shrubs, and even the herbage are taken. Slender poles are used to build houses; in- considerable shrubs are turned into charcoal. In the lower mountains of northeastern China, where the strip | ping process has reached it's extreme phase, there is no trace of anything worthy the name of forest. In the graveyards and courts of the temples
 few aged cedars have been pre- served by the force of public opin-
 ion, and poplars and fruit trees plant l ed about dwellings, are protected as
 private property by the peasant own- CTS.
 in the province of Shantung, where deforestatiOn is practically complete. fuel and fodder for cattle are literal | ly scratchel from the hillsides by boys
 who go out from villages with their | iron rakes in autumn to secure winter | supplies. Grazing animals, searching every ledge and crevice, crop the re-
 maining grass down to the very roots. A dearth of wood is not the only forlOrn result of forest devastation; dearth of water and the ruin of the soil follow in it's train. In western China, where forest destruction is
 not yet complete, enough vegetation covers the mountains to retard the run-Off of the rains and return suf- | ficient moisture to lower levels,
 where it can be reached by the roots
 of crops and where springs are num-
 erous. But on the waste hills of eastern China the rains rush off the
 barren surfaces, flooding the valleys,
 ruining the fields, and destroying
 towns and villages. No water is re.
 tained at the higher levels, so that none is fed underground to the lower
 soils or to the springs. As a result,
 even on the plains the water level is
 too fer beneath the surface to be used. Without Irrigation and the in ga0ious te-acing of htlsi1os, by which the rains are made to wash the
 soil into thousands of miniature
 fields whose edges are propper up by
 wa]ls agriculture would be entire l ly Impossible. Even irrigation calls
 for the immense labor of drawing the
 needed water from wells.
 In a word, the Chinese, by forest
 waste, have brought upon themselves
 two costly calamaties-floods and
 water famine.
 All of which doesn't relieve us of
 our obligation to rescue the thous-
 ands who now face starvation from
 a terrible doom at least partly
 brought on by the shortsightedness of