A forest of six hundred million acres, thoroughly organized and officered under the Secretary of Agriculture, would sink the post-office department and its patronage into insignificance, and would be the brightest star in the civil service solar system to those who elect a life in the service of the country. But this is not all—it would make the climate more healthful, the rain-fall more regular and abundant, the soil more productive, and in due time would exceed all other sources of revenue combined.
The immensity of the consumption of forest supplies can not be measured accurately; but some idea can be formed of its vastness, when it is known that the one hundred and eighty-seven thousand miles of railroads and one hundred and thirty-seven thousand miles of telegraph lines in this country consume each year the annual growth or a forest equal to one hundred and fifty million acres. And nothing short of a large area of well-managed forest will prove adequate to future demands. What else can the nation expect when at present statistics show the annual consumption, or crop, exceeds in value seven hundred million dollars?
This is more than the yield of all the gold-mines and silver-mines, coal, iron, copper, lead, and zinc combined; and if these are added to the value of all the steamboats, sailing vessels, canal-boats, flat-boats, and barges in American waters, the sum would be still less than the value of the forest crop by an amount sufficient to purchase at cost of construction all the canals, all the telegraph and telephone lines in the United States. The value of the forest income exceeds the gross income of all the railroads and transportation lines, and is an interest ranking in importance far above all others in the United States.
If this country ever becomes a Dalmatia—changed from a healthful, fruitful and salubrious habitation to a sterile, sickly waste, with decayed cities and crumbling greatness, history will not say “the Romans did it.”
Man should ever remember prevention is better than cure. The worst of evils is prevented by the removal of the cause. And when the apathy and improvidence which now threaten the destiny of a rich and prosperous nation are removed, then, and not till then, can it truly be said that the lost Paradise of the Eastern Continent has been regained in the New World of the West. The people should understand, also, the inspired influences of living forests—trees—those musical mutes, upon those who breathe their sweet ennobling influence.
The finest agricultural climate, perhaps, in the world, fell to the lot of Ohio. But this state will soon be obliged to do something to offset the destruction that is still going on with the little groves. When it came into the Union, it presented the grandest unbroken forest of forty-one thousand square miles that was ever beheld on this continent. A forest interspersed with hills and valleys, springs, brooks, and rivers; with a soil most inviting to the aspirations of agriculture.
The natural conditions of things were such that the possessors of this inheritance soon desired occupation of the soil, and looked upon its trees with less favor than they did upon those who disputed their titles with the tomahawk. Indians could be induced to move out of the way, but trees were all disposed to stand their ground and take the consequences. Both were considered too numerous for easy advancement of civilization, and in the contest both got the worst of it.
Forests may flourish independent of agriculture, but the latter can not prosper without the former. This was not so evident, however, to the early inhabitant, who felt he had thrust upon him more than his share of perpetual shade, and every owner and occupant of the soil combined with his neighbor in a warfare of destruction upon trees, and millions, the best of their kind ever produced were killed by cutting a circle around the trunk and left to decay. These deadenings were to be seen all over the country, as fast and as far as settlements were made or contemplated. And now, in less than a hundred years, more than eighty per cent. of this great forest has disappeared, and only small clumps in agricultural sections can be seen in any part of the state.
The older trees that occupied their places in these remnants of woods have nearly all fallen by the hand of the axman, and the younger growths are being appropriated for various purposes, greatly in excess of possible reproduction to the remaining stock; and the time is not far distant, if things continue without change for the better, when the salubrious climate, with summer showers and productive soil, will become changed to one of uncertainty. The entire North-west is now on the very border of forest limit. Still thousands of portable saw-mills are moving over the states, destroying the remaining needful trees, and the rural districts will discover, when too late, that private interest is insufficient to protect forest lands in quantity enough to maintain climatic and sanitary influences without the aid of state government.
Some years ago the legislature of Ohio passed a law, now in force, which lost the state many millions of growing forest trees that stood on the public grounds. The act reads: “Supervisors shall cut down all bushes growing within any county or township highway, the same to be done within the months of July and August of each year.” Thus a clean sweep was made of every tree, bush and plant, as the word “bushes” was legally defined to mean places “abounding in trees and shrubs.” Trees of all kinds, sizes and ages, bordering and within the legal limits of the highways, met their doom under this act. And every growing scion that dared since to raise its head along the border lines of Ohio roads has met a similar fate in the months of July and August of each year.