Checking the Waste: A Study in Conservation

by Mary Huston Gregory

For all hillsides and rocky places, as well as wood-lots, the hardwoods which sell best for timber should be planted in the North and West, and the evergreens near the sea-coasts and in the South. Forests of oak, hickory, walnut, maple (especially the sugar maple, which yields a steady return during the lifetime of the tree), elm, chestnut, and locust will sell for a good price, and are always salable. It requires many years to grow large timber, but by proper management several years can be gained in its growth, and it is always a valuable investment for a farmer to make for his children.

Not individuals only, but states and the national government as well, should provide forests for the future, and this is the greatest duty of all, for much of the most important work can only be done by a power that can control the entire watershed at the head-waters of a river-system.

For example, the Appalachian Mountains are the source of hundreds of streams which flow east, west and south, and pass through many states. These mountains were originally covered with a heavy forest growth, but they belong largely to private companies who are cutting the forests at a rapid rate.

The effect of this is seen in bare hillsides, washed by mountain torrents which are causing disastrous floods on the lowlands, filling up the streams, and carrying away much of the most fertile soil of some of the southeastern states, and in the drying up of the small tributaries.

This can not be remedied by single companies nor by the states that suffer most. The only remedy is for the government to buy the land at the head-waters of the rivers and reforest it. The same conditions on a smaller scale are to be found in every mountainous region where the forests are cut away.

The United States owns a large amount of forest but not nearly enough to insure a supply of wood for the future. The public forest lands are nearly all in the West. They consist of national forests, national parks, Indian and military reservations and land open to entry as timber claims. In all they contain nearly 100,000,000 acres, or about half as much as is contained in farmers' wood-lots and about one-fourth as much as the amount owned by large lumber companies.

The United States, on its public domain, is setting about a careful system of cutting and replanting. This system is known as forestry. It has been worked out by some of the more advanced nations of Europe who saw that destruction was coming on them through the cutting away of their forests. Now forestry is practised by every nation except Turkey and China. The principles have been well proved and the results of scientific care of the forests are known to be even more sure than in farming or live-stock raising.

The Department of Agriculture will send complete directions for planting trees in rows at proper distances, will tell what kinds are best suited to each region and condition, how to make them grow rapidly, and when to cut. All these things should be thoroughly understood by every land owner, large or small, but at present forestry is practised on only one per cent. of all land in this country, owned by private persons or companies, though it is practised on seventy per cent. of all public lands.

The countries that show the best results in forestry are some of the German states, particularly Prussia and Saxony, and France. In Prussia the rate of production is three times as great as it was seventy-five years ago. There is three times as much saw timber in a tree as there was at that time, and the money returns from an average acre of forest are now nearly ten times what they were sixty years ago. In Saxony the state forests are receiving two dollars and thirty cents per acre a year above all expenses from forests on land not fitted for agriculture, and the profit is increasing every year.

France and Germany together spend $11,000,000 a year on their public forests and receive from them an income of $30,000,000, or nearly three times as much, while the United States spends for its public forests more than ten times as much as it receives.