I place this first, because the influence of the forests is so far-reaching, and we have no clear-cut, well-defined policy in Ohio designed to preserve, improve, and extend our forests.
Ohio has an area of 41,000 square miles, and has been tremendously rich in hardwood timber. We have cut down this timber most improvidently, with no effort to restore the supply, and so far as the State is concerned are now on the verge of a timber famine. In 1900, according to the Twelfth United States Census, Ohio ranked seventh as a lumber-producing State, being exceeded by Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, New York, Minnesota, and Maine. Since then she has dropped to the nineteenth rank, and bids fair in the near future, unless prompt and vigorous action is taken, to have so little timber left as not to be rated at all. The effects of this wholesale removal of our forests may be briefly summarized as follows:
(1) We are compelling those who come after us to pay an almost prohibitive price for lumber, and are likely to see an end of some of the most important wood-consuming industries of the State. As a source of wood supply our forests touch the interests of all. We are a universally wood-consuming as well as food-consuming people.
(2) The recent floods in the river-valleys of Ohio, which have caused losses of life and of property valued at millions, have followed and will continue to follow the denudation of our hills by excessive tree-cutting, followed by fire.
(3) In many places the erosion or wash caused by the rapid run-off of the rain and melting snow is reducing the deforested hills to barren wastes, and is covering much of the fertile soil of the valleys with sterile sand and gravel.
The forest problem is the great Conservation problem in Ohio. It affects the State, because it concerns every citizen of the State, and it can only be solved by action of the State and the Nation.
2—The Waterway Problem
In my opinion this question comes next in importance. By waterways I mean not only navigable streams and canals, but power sites on non-navigable as well as navigable streams. If the forests are properly managed, water will be an unfailing source of power. No few men, nor any special interest, should control these sources of power, for this means a control of all industry that depends on power. Our waterways may not be so enormously valuable as those of some other States, and this is all the more reason why they should be conserved for the public good.
We shall be needlessly mortgaging the future by allowing any special class or interest to use our waterways and water-power sites without making some direct payment for these valuable privileges. This is important not only for State revenue, but as a recognition of the principle that what belongs to the people should not be absolutely surrendered to private interests. There is great value in our undeveloped water-power. An engineer's inventory of all the waters of the State, with their possibilities of power, would cause Ohio to sit up and take notice.
If forests and waterways were properly conserved, we would hear less from railroads and power companies of the enormous bill of expense from floods at one time, and loss from low water at another.