Checking the Waste: A Study in Conservation

by Mary Huston Gregory

We must understand, must think, what the destruction of our forests would mean to us. It would mean fierce droughts and fiercer floods. It would mean the gradual drying up of our streams, a scarcity of water to drink, as in China to-day. It would mean that the manufacture of wooden articles would practically cease. The thousand conveniences that we enjoy as a matter of course would become rare and costly. It would mean that only the rich could build houses of wood, and this would force the masses of people into crowded quarters, not only the poor, but the well-to-do also. These are only a few of the many disasters that would follow the loss of our forests, and all these things might come to pass before we ourselves are old!

If we knew that at a certain time a tidal wave would engulf our homes, how we should work to save all that we could before the calamity overtook us! And we should set about the saving of our forests with equal care, for their destruction means distress for every one of us.

Fortunately, this is only the dark possibility. The methods of prevention are well known to those who have studied the history of the nations that have fallen, and the nations that have risen to power. It is only necessary that all the people should know these things and realize their importance, in order to keep conditions as they are at present or even to better them.

The methods of prevention are five. They are:

(1) To use the trees in the most careful and conservative way without the great wastes now common.

(2) To save the vast areas of forests that are now burned each year.

(3) To prevent loss from insects.

(4) To use substitutes: that is, to use other and cheaper materials to take the place of wood whenever possible.

(5) To plant trees and to replant where old ones have been cut, until all land that is not fitted for agriculture is covered with forests.

These are only the rules that good sense and good business would teach us to follow, but we have not followed any of them in the past, and now it will be necessary to do all these things if we are to continue to have enough wood to use to keep pace with our progress in other directions.