Some States will not grow trees. Illinois will not grow trees. It would prefer to grow corn. Its land is too rich to grow timber, and the people will grow corn and exchange it for the product of other States which are better adapted to tree-growing and not so well adapted to agriculture. The lands west of the Cascade Range are well adapted to tree-growing on account of the great rainfall, and not so well adapted for other uses. A tree will grow there in forty years to as great a size as it will in eighty years on this side of the Cascade Range. In short, trees will be grown where it pays to grow them, where they are encouraged to be grown, where the people want them grown. We cannot grow trees on sentiment; tree-growing will have to pay; it will have to stand upon a commercial basis. The Government cannot grow trees without its costing something to grow them. Conservation has been wrongly understood.
The great leader of American forestry, Gifford Pinchot, is in favor of development (applause). He said in his speech at Seattle a year ago that there could be greater waste by non-development and by non-use than there had been by the wastefulness of the past. That is true. By non-development and non-use we commit sometimes more waste than we did in the past, for we could not waste when things were not worth anything; a thing that isn't worth saving and whose by-product cannot be utilized is not wasted even if it goes to the burning ground or lies in the woods. (Applause)
President Baker—Ladies and Gentlemen: You will all be glad to hear from the greatest, grandest, noblest work of God, our good women. I have the pleasure of introducing Mrs George O. Welch, of Fergus Falls, representing the General Federation of Women's Clubs. (Applause).
Mrs Welch—Mr President, Delegates to the Second National Conservation Congress, Ladies and Gentlemen: In the preparations for this great Congress, there seems to have been no possible item omitted which could in any way contribute to the pleasure or edification of visitors, save in two particulars; and with these the management had nothing to do. The first is the unavoidable absence of the President of the General Federation of Women's Clubs, Mrs Philip N. Moore, resulting from the accident which befell her in Cincinnati last May, from which she has not fully recovered. The second is due to those two elements which have for years uncounted interfered with man's proposals—time and tide. It is because time must be consumed in crossing the Atlantic and tide reckoned with on the voyage that Mrs Emmons Crocker, of Boston, is not able to be present to speak on "Woman's Influence in National Questions." Her absence is indeed to be regretted, since influence is today women's best asset.
Because of these two regrettable occurrences a great honor and pleasure has fallen upon me. I am proud to be the bearer of greetings to the Second National Conservation Congress from the General Federation of Women's Clubs, an organization 800,000 strong, that may justly claim kinship with this body, since its watch words for years have been Conservation and Service, which are the impulse and purpose of this great Congress.
The inception of the General Federation of Women's Clubs was due to the recognition of the necessity of conserving the energy and strength wastefully expended by scattered clubs remote from each other, which concentrated, might make a tremendous influence for the development of good fellowship and good citizenship. That the General Federation has become of great force I think you will admit, since its President was invited to be one of that first notable Conference called by the President of the United States in 1908 to consider the problems which this Congress is hoping to solve. She was the only woman invited to that Conference of Governors, and it is not vain pride which prompts the mention of the great honor thus conferred upon the General Federation—it is rather an humble sort of pride, since recognition of the work which Women's Clubs are doing carries with it an obligation to greater effort and greater achievement.
The General Federation of Women's Clubs has long been teaching the necessity of Conservation, not only of the natural resources on which the material prosperity of this country depends, but of that vital force which means public health and all that goes with it; of that intellectual force which means education; and of that spiritual force which makes for higher ideals, wider sympathies, and fuller appreciation of our responsibility for the welfare of our fellow-beings.