THE FATE OF SOUTH JERSEY.
The Camden and Atlantic, the Philadelphia and Atlantic City, the New Jersey Southern, and some minor railroads, pass through portions of New Jersey long known as the "Jersey Barrens." They are all new roads, comparatively speaking, but they have wonderfully stimulated the enterprise that has created so many flourishing villages that ten years ago had never been heard of. Vineland, the fairest and most flourishing village in the country, as well as the largest, is only about fifteen years old. Its population is six thousand. Forbidding-looking swamps, giving rise to swarming myriads of mosquitoes and to malaria through their dank, decaying vegetation, have been converted into flourishing cranberry-meadows, and the dry land into fine vineyards and fruit-orchards surrounding homes of every grade of elegance, from the simple vine-covered cottage to the costly villa with carefully-kept evergreen hedges enclosing exquisite lawns, statues, fountains and rare flowers. The extent of these hedges is estimated at seventy-five miles.
But this prosperous reclamation of the waste lands of South Jersey has already received a check from an insidious but terrible enemy, destined to undo the labor of years unless promptly and wisely attacked. This enemy is drought, traceable directly to the destruction of the forests. Formerly, glass-manufacturing companies established themselves in well-wooded regions, used the forests for their furnaces, and when these were exhausted migrated to new places to repeat the work of devastation. Then the settlers "cleared up" the land extensively, and since the railroads have been built the burning of the woods along their routes by cinders from the locomotives has been terribly frequent, and often extensive. A conductor on the Camden and Atlantic stated last year that he had counted fifteen forest-fires during one trip from Camden to the sea.
Yet nothing is done to prevent these ever-recurring calamities. The citizens complain, mourn over the destruction, grumble at the railroads, and thank God when the fires are at a safe distance from their own homes. When personally threatened, they turn out, men, women and children, aided by terror-stricken and sympathizing neighbors, and "fight the fire" by felling trees and clearing away the inflammable matter in the path of the fire. Sometimes a whole neighborhood will struggle for days together without respite as only the desperate can. Many of these fires, it is said, are due to the wilful mischief of boys and others. Hundreds of acres are destroyed every year. Along the Camden and Atlantic almost every tract of woodland has been burned over once or more.
The effect of the decrease of the rainfall in South Jersey is already serious. The water-supply in Vineland, Hammonton and other places is constantly lowering: all the wells except those that were dug very deep at first have had to be lowered at least two feet.
The most practical step at present toward arresting the destruction of woodlands is no doubt the organization of forest-protecting and planting societies like those in Germany, which have now so far secured the aid of the legislative power that no landowner can cut down one of his own forest trees without the consent of the authorities. This seems like tyranny, but it is really that wisdom which recognizes the good of the whole community as paramount to any private consideration.
M. H.