The forest tree a paying investment

Abstract

Introduction: The study of Forestry as a factor in the life and civilization of our country, and its effect upon the country itself, is a question that has been sadly neglected. Since time immemorial, the tree has stood in all its silent beauty and grandeur, performing a work which is a daily blessing to every home in the land. Silently, year by year, the tree has done its noble work, yet is has received scarcely a word of praise for its mission of mercy. There has been no intention to slight an important subject, but the American mind has been filled too full by other questions. The attention has been given to political, economic, or social topics, more exciting, but less important. In clinging to the back of our own hobby, we often lose sight of the hobbies which other people ride. The politician has the money question for a hobby. In the office, on the street, or at the home, his mind is filled by this one important subject, and his time is given to convincing his friends that the adoption by the government of a single gold standard is the only thing that will keep it from following Rome in the downward step to oblivion. Another hobbyist will convince you that unless the rum traffic is crushed the country is ruined. It has been the tendency to let the factional rivalry absorb the interests of the people, at the expense of other questions less open to debate. This has been the position of the forestry question. All who will look at the facts cannot help but see what the tree is doing, and give ear to the lesson it is teaching. Yet the interests have been absorbed in other fields, and without doing anything to stop their progress, the people have stood and heard the woodman's axe and the crash of the falling trees. They have seen the brush accumulate behind the work of destruction, and watched the fire, gaining a start in this brush, then rapidly spreading in the trees and flames leaping high in air and painting upon the clouds their picture of desolation, the fury of the fire devastating miles of forest and transforming the scene of beauty to a barren waste.