from time to time to meet just such emergencies. 'ast inland seas wrought their consequent mark upon the prosperity of rich communities, and that was only the warning note.
History is constantly repeating itself, and the history of the tremendous floods that have occurred again and again throughout the lower Mississippi Valley, is the indellible record of the crime of those responsible for denuding the headwaters of the great stream of its standing timber; and the history of this shameful condition shall be the history of similar conditions that the next generation will have to face in all the principal valleys of the West, if those who are advocating the abolition of Governmental control over the public forests are permitted to have full sway.
Already the rainfall in the arid regions east of the ranges in question has been visibly affected by the loss of trees; already the writing is on the wall for all who run to read if the hands of commercial greed are not stayed.
In a speech delivered at Portland, Oregon, during the Lewis and Clark Exposition of 1905, James J. Hill, the great railway magnate—and incidentally heavily interested in Western timber lands—declared that one acre of timber land possessed more intrinsic value to a railway corporation than forty acres of agricultural land.
Why?
Because, 25 years hence, James J. Hill will have been gathered to his fathers, and he had no thought beyond the grave.
It is preposterous to believe that he was giving expression to an honest opinion, for the reason that the 40 acres of agricultural land will be producing constant revenues for his transportation lines ages after Mr. Hill is dead and forgotten—long after 40.000 acres of timber land has ceased to yield any profit for his roads if the policy shall henceforth be to throw down the bars for the cattle to get in and devour the crop.
Seemingly, this antagonistic feeling against reserves is inspired by the old hoggish instinct that has stood as a barrier against the proper development of the West since the earliest period of its attempted settlement. It is the ghost of the desire which characterized the action of the hydraulic miners in the early days of California to ruin the navigable streams of that state at the expense of the general public, that their greed for gold might be satiated; the same old phantom of selfishness that has haunted the action of sheep and cattlemen on the Great Plain.to acquire control of all that portion of the universe that their herds might multiply upon the ruins of individual rights; a relic of the warfare that has raged for centuries throughout the civilized globe in the struggle to make public interest subservient to private gain.
Dr. Harry Lane, the Mayor of Portland, Oregon, is an enthusiastic advocate of the idea that the forests should be under Governmental control, and advances many potent reasons for his views upon the subject.
He was born in Oregon, and for more than half a century has made a close analytical study of the forestry question. On account of his knowledge in this respect, his opinions carry much weight, and he is regarded generally throughout the Northwest as an authority in the premises. Trade journals devoted to timber interests have eagerly sought contributions from his pen bearing upon the various problems incident to the situation, and his remarks in relation thereto before civic bodies has been productive of a wide range of intelligent thought. In discussing the matter recently with the writer, he said:
"I am decidedly in favor of the plan for the Government to have absolute control over the forests of this country. It is not a new idea, by any means, as the wisdom of such a measure has been long recognized in Germany, Sweden and Norway, where the people of the present age are sawing up lumber from trees that were planted by their ancestors a hundred years previously.
"I do not pretend to be familiar with conditions existing anywhere beyond the borders of the Pacific Northwest, but here I have lived practically all my life.
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