Mr. O'Connor: Concerning the planting of trees along the roadside, what enemies have they? I have watched this very closely since I have been connected with Mr. Littlepage's farm and I find that the walnut trees and pecan trees have very few enemies. I think that he has something like four hundred trees, and there were not three of them that were troubled with caterpillars. What better could we have along our road sides than nut trees when from the oak, the elm and other trees there are pesky worms dropping down when you go along with an automobile or carriage.
President Linton: I want to say to the ladies present that the ladies of Michigan are greatly interested in this work. We recently established a state trunk line highway known as the Colgrove Highway, named for the President of our Michigan State Good Roads Association. Senator Penney was the introducer of that bill also and it became a law. That particular road runs across our state in such a way that it is about three hundred miles in length. One county that it crosses is known as Montcalm County. At a meeting we had in their court house we had a committee named in each township through which the highway passed for the purpose of properly planting trees and beautifying that highway. Upon my return home I received a letter from the county judge saying that the people of Montcalm County would not stand for planting and beautifying that one road alone but the whole county has been organized and every township in it and half of the membership of each committee is composed of women, and they want these trees and plants on every township road as well as on that state road. That is the way in which the work is going along in many sections of our state and it will soon cover it all with the same enthusiasm. So that the ladies can be of great good in this organization also. There is not a home or a residence street but desires fine shrubs and fine trees. It is especially so with the farmers. They want these beautiful things that the city people have been having for many years in their front yards. They are going to demand shrubbery and trees beyond any call that ever has been made for them in the past. So you can readily see from our work, although much of it is to be carried on in a public way by our agricultural colleges and state institutions of that kind, that they will be able to furnish only one tree or one plant in a hundred of those that will be demanded. That feature I wish especially to impress upon the minds of any nurserymen that may be present. The call in the next decade is going to be along those lines, for ornamental shrubbery and for useful trees, just as the fruit tree has been called for in the past.
Mr. Fagan: I don't know that I have anything constructive to add to the road side planting idea. I know that our landscape gardener at the experimental station in the college has, in the past few years, been giving it serious consideration, and if I am not mistaken he has taken the question up with our forest and state highway commissioners in the state. How far it is going to go I don't know. There is a feature of the roadside planting which has been mentioned indirectly this evening that we must not overlook. Just as soon as we consider a program of roadside planting we must also consider a program for the control of pests. Regardless of whether they be pecan trees or hickories or walnuts we are bound to meet with these pests. Whenever we begin a systematic planting, or collection of plants, it does not make much difference whether oak trees, or catalpas or chestnuts, or what not, we can look forward to the time when we will be confronted with a pest control proposition. As to roadside planting in New England it would not make much difference whether it was a walnut or butternut or pecan. A gipsy or brown tailed moth would just as soon eat the foliage off a butternut tree as off an elm. We have here in New Jersey at the present time the Japanese iris beetle and it will eat anything in sight. As soon as we turn nature upside down, as we have nearly done in many sections of the country, we are bound to bring in these pests. It would be well in any law—and I know in this state we would consider a law, and an experimental station could have charge of work connected therewith—that one of the provisions we would insist on being put in the law would be one to control the pests which may come. Right in our district today the tent caterpillar is playing havoc with our walnuts; the oyster shell scale is going through our timber in Center County; and I can take you into the mountains five miles from any residence and I can show you oyster shell scale on half a dozen of our native species. It is nice to kid ourselves along to think our butternuts and our hickories would never be subject to these pests, but they will be. When the Northwest started to plant apple orchards they said they had no codling moths up there. There were some orchards that didn't but sooner or later they came. The time to nip those things is in the bud, and not let them spread. Lack of foresight has cost New England millions and millions of dollars just because they would not take the advice of one man when he told them that the gipsy moth and brown tail moth had gotten away from him. They laughed at him.
I wonder whether this association could not get our federal road department back of this idea of roadside planting. I know that back of the federal aid movement there is an important point of contact in roadside planting.
Senator Penney: Our bill provides that the highway department shall care for and maintain the trees. I think the bill is broad enough to cover that subject. I think we all realize that we cannot stop planting trees for fear of some pest that might come, but we have got to provide the means of fighting it if it does come. Our highway department in Michigan has employed a man, a graduate of Yale College who is an expert in horticulture and all this work of planting and caring for the trees is to be turned over to him.
Dr. Canaday: In many parts of Germany the practice of planting trees along the state highways has been in vogue for perhaps half a century. They have used fruit trees and it has been found to be very feasible. The state has found that the proceeds of the trees has gone a long way towards keeping up the highways. Of course they probably have had their population under more rigorous control than ours has been. They have been able to collect the proceeds of the trees better. The question of the railroad rights of way might be taken up. A few of the railroads in the United States have already begun planting trees along their rights of way looking forward to a future supply of cross ties. It seems to me the greatest difficulty that will be encountered in this work will be the conflict with the telephone companies and the power lines. If that can be satisfactorily solved, I think the rest of it will be comparatively easy.
Mr. Smedley: In Pennsylvania near our large cities, the highway department has become aware that the roads are all too narrow. There was a bill passed in the last legislature giving the commissioner of highways a right to establish the width of roads at thirty-three feet, I think it was, with one hundred and twenty feet as the maximum. The department is now making a survey of all the main highways near the large cities. I happen to live just out of Philadelphia, about fifteen miles, on the line between Philadelphia and West Chester. It is a continuation of Market Street the principal east and west street of Philadelphia. It was laid out sixty feet wide. That was one of the first to claim the attention of the department and it will soon be, I understand, established on the map as one hundred feet wide or probably one hundred and twenty feet. That primarily is to stop the encroachment of the buildings near Philadelphia so that when the question of opening this road to its new width comes up damages will not be excessive. Some of us living along there take great pride in that road and want to see it developed but it is going to be some time before this is opened to its full width and it is needless to plant trees until it is. I don't know how you have things in Michigan but a great many of our Pennsylvania roads are old highways that have worn down with banks ten or fifteen feet high, and it is oftentimes a question where to put the trees.
President Linton: Our highways in Michigan are, ninety per cent of them perhaps, four rods in width. That you will know is a good ample width, sixty-six feet wide. The basis of the planting as adopted by our state highway department, as I understand it, is thirteen feet from each line fence, making trees forty feet apart on opposite sides of the roadways. The main portion of the planting will be forty feet apart but that is simply a detail and the entire matter is left with the state highway commissioner and those who assist him. And, as stated by Senator Penney, they are very competent men in that department. Of course some trees would be placed further apart than others. There is no absolutely fixed distance. I don't know of any movement that will more quickly cause the planting of more trees than the one we are outlining at the present time in undertaking to cover the highways of this country. Michigan alone has six thousand miles of state trunk line highway. That is only a small portion of the highways in our state. These are the important roadways connecting our largest cities and business points. Just as an estimate I would say that we have ten times as many miles of roadway in Michigan as we have trunk line highways. If that average should be maintained throughout the country in each one of the states, and I imagine our state is an average one as to the number of miles of roadway, you would see that there would be three hundred thousand miles of trunk line highways alone, saying nothing about all the other highways and by-ways. So that I believe within the next five or ten years this roadside planting will cause more trees to be planted, and useful and valuable trees too, than all the efforts made in this country up to date in re-forestation. The people are alive to this subject and are asking for this very thing. It is only for us to map out a plan, arrange the details, and provide the sources from which they can obtain their supply and the trees will be planted.
It was my lot and good fortune last fall, following our meeting in the City of Washington, to visit Mount Vernon and there meeting the superintendent Mr. Dodge. He said to me that our association could have the products of the black walnut trees at Mount Vernon upon condition that that crop should not be commercialized in any way but used for public purposes. In behalf of the association I accepted the crop of walnuts, and, as I recall it, got in the neighborhood of thirty bushels of fine walnuts. They were selected walnuts the best and larger ones. It so happened that they arrived late in Saginaw, where my home is, and it was simply impossible to distribute them generally throughout the country. When it became known that we had these walnuts, and it became necessary to distribute these nuts and have them planted in our immediate locality, our people were delighted with the fact, and every school in every school district in the country called for them, and every city school called for some of these walnuts. They were planted in every school yard, in many cases with appropriate ceremonies along patriotic lines, and that did a great deal of good. Our citizens as individuals called for them. I was surprised to see the interest in it. They wanted them in their yards and at their city homes. Following all this I had about two thousand of these walnuts left. I wondered just what I could do with these. It was impossible to arrange a program for distribution so I asked the superintendent of parks of our city if he would plant and care for them and he readily agreed to do it. So that what was left of the consignment was placed in our finest and largest park. Shortly after having planted these, and the papers having noticed what had been done, I sent a copy to our honored first president, Dr. Morris. Soon thereafter I received a letter from him saying that he disliked very much to predict disappointment, but disappointment certainly was coming to us for our efforts in Saginaw, because, he said, "Mr. Linton, I have gone through this experience and the squirrels and other rodents will certainly get every one of those nuts. You will be disappointed in the results in the spring and I am telling you this so it won't come to you all at once. I want you to be prepared for the disappointment when it comes." I rather imagined it would come. I knew that the trees in that particular park harbored a good many fox squirrels and others, and I imagined they would get these walnuts. But I was very much astonished this spring to see the entire crop come up through the ground. I imagine it was a ninety-five per cent crop. So that we have about two thousand young walnuts growing about as high as this table from last year's planting. They are thrifty and they will be distributed around the state of Michigan this coming spring, and at other places. To show the interest manifested in that particular movement I will say that I received letters from perhaps half of the states in the country asking if they could not be supplied with some of these walnuts from George Washington's former home at Mount Vernon. I even got letters from the State of Virginia asking that some of them be sent from Saginaw, Michigan, to them in Virginia for planting at their home. So you can see how far reaching a thing of this kind can be. I know that we have started something here that will sweep from one end of the United States to the other, and will do more good along the lines of re-forestation than any organization up to date has been able to do.
Mr. Littlepage: I move that a committee be appointed to report at the morning session the best method of getting this bill before the various legislatures. I thought first of attempting to formulate what idea I might have in the form of a resolution, but it appears to me that it is something that may require a little thought. Therefore I move the appointment of a committee of three to report in the morning the best form of a resolution or whatever seems best to adopt by this association to get action.