Chapter XXIX
This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, Stand like Druids of old, with voices sad and prophetic.— From Longfellow's "Evangeline."
THE chief opposition to the Government's forestry policy comes from a source inspired by selfish motives. In the efforts that are being made to have the reserves, or the best portions of them, restored to public entry, there exists a powerful reminder of a greedy herd feasting its eyes upon a farmer's inclosed cornfield, whose waving plumes excites a beastly appetite that can only be satisfied by the sacrifice of the crop intended for human comfort.
That self-interest is the basis of nearly all this agitation against the creation of forest reservations, is evidenced by the fact that none of its advocates have yet advanced a single argument that appeals to common sense. They have indulged in glittering generalities, and purposely ignored every phase of reason and practically all elements of truth in their representations pertaining to the actual situation.
No person imbued with a grain of intelligence can voice any honest protest against the creation of the reserves in accordance with President Roosevelt's well-defined plans; no one possessed of a clear and unbiased knowledge of conditions prevailing in the mountainous regions of the West is in any position to raise sincere objections to a measure that is founded upon the lofty principle of preserving the forests for the benefit of future generations, and for the purpose of protecting the watersheds and conserving the rainfall, that the people of the present age may not suffer.
The greater portion of my life has been passed among the mountains and forests of the West, and for upward of 25 years I have been actively engaged in exploration of this vast domain. This has afforded ample opportunity for studying conditions existing in the forests, and I have no hesitancy in asserting that had not the President interfered when he did in October, 1902. and put a stop to the carnival of looting then in progress by making provisional suspension of the affected districts for forest reserve purposes, it would have resulted in the enforced consideration of problems the solution of which no prophet could have foretold, and would have become merely a question of time measured by a short span of years when the Sierra Nevada and Cascade ranges of mountains would have become shorn of their magnificent heritage, and the broad valleys of California and Oregon left to the mercy of the elements.
The winter of 1906-7 gave timely notice that the wholesale devastation that has been in progress for more than a quarer of a century must reap its own harvest of perpetual injury to mankind. The principal watercourses of the interior of the two states named, overflowed their banks as they had never done before, notwithstanding the scientific methods of restraint that had been adopted
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