of our lumbering regions competition would lead to faster and far more wasteful cutting. It is a fairly good rule not to take any side before understanding one as well as the other.

There are, however, several wide premises everywhere applicable. In the old world and new they became established with the diminution of forest resources. The unfortunate thing is that few communities profit by the lessons of others, no matter how often they are reiterated. We hear much of European forestry, yet in nearly every European country it has been a complete upbuilding after almost total forest destruction. England in India, and perhaps Japan, are about the only foreign nations that have really tried to forestall. The United States is no exception to the rule, and considering that it has even more examples elsewhere to observe, more modern advantages of education to facilitate deduction, more foundation with which to begin, and more wealth with which to work, it is the least excusable of all.

It seems to me we must frankly admit, basing our propaganda accordingly, that we do not approach older and more paternally governed nations in responsibility for the future. Whether we ascribe it to the still existing wealth of resource, or to selfish individualism, the fact remains that we are prone to safeguard present interests only, and if we postpone forest preservation until this national trait is outgrown we will be making too late a start. Up to very recently forestry reformers have been too idealistic to get results. They have dwelt upon the needs of posterity and urged sacrifice as a duty. I cannot quarrel with this as a matter of ethics and I admit it essential to complete success, but immediate results come most surely from fear of immediate injury. Even good laws are of small use unless we have the public of today sufficiently worried to insist on their enforcement. The great need is for adding to our preachments of duty more vigorous and skillful appeals to human selfishness. It may not satisfy our reforming instincts, but too many of those who really control our forest destinies will respond to nothing else.

How, then, shall we do this? Again I say seek local arguments. Do you live on the Atlantic Coast? Look up the payroll total for all lumbering and woodworking industries in your state and the total selling receipts from their manufactured products. The size of the revenue thus kept at home, but which will leave you if these industries have to move nearer some other source of raw material, will probably amaze you as much as it will the public. Learn how much your consumers pay annually for all forest products and figure how much they would save if there were no import freight bills. Then learn the rate of growth of your own species and refute the popular belief that it is too slow to enable saving these sums to those now living. Do you know that Massachusetts is today manufac turing its fourth crop of white pine?

Learn your area of waste land, and with the same definite growth

figures to give your statements news value and convincing business accuracy, show what it might be earning the community by producing forest commodities. Calculate the tax revenues your existing forests bring, and that which forests on now waste land would pay, and show the consequent reduction of taxation on other property. On definite premises of area, growth rate, and conservative crop values, show the revenue obtainable by the state from forest reserves of its own, balance this against the cost of such a project, and prove that you could lower all taxation just as they do in Europe. Study the effect of deforestation on stream flow, use specific familiar examples, and convert the injury into dollars and cents. When you get figures in all these calculations, turn them into popular comparisons that are easily grasped.

If you live on the Pacific Coast, forget that white pine grows rapidly in Massachusetts and appeal to local pride by saying that here, undoubtedly, is the nation's woodlot, where climate and rapid-growing species give an advantage over the East which it is a business crime to leave ungrasped. Show that the area denuded by fire and use will produce an equally valuable crop in, say, sixty years, and that leaving this land idle is costing our five coast forest states about thirty million dollars a year. Add this loss to the loss of standing timber by fire and show that the coast is throwing away nearly seventy million dollars a year which otherwise would be distributed thru every channel of industry.

Without considering reforestation, show that the lumber industry now brings one hundred and twenty-five millions of dollars a year to the Pacific Coast, mostly distributed for labor and supplies. Compare this to our fruit crop or our wheat crop and remember that it will increase by leaps as gulf- and lake-state timber fails. Do you live in California? Get at your tongue's end such facts as that California has over three hundred billion feet of uncut mature timber, that probably it will all be cut in less than fifty years and that even at present prices this means distribution of at least four billion dollars among Californians. Show the wreck of industries that would follow its sudden destruction by fire and point out that partial destruction means the same thing in corresponding degree.

If a score of American citizens are endangered by an uprising in China no price is too great to pay for their protection. When a few hundred sailors went down in the Maine, we were aroused to the supremity of national effort-war. Were the lives of the hundreds of men and women who met a fearful death in last year's forest fires any less precious? their sufferings less cause for national horror and effort to prevent repetition? I cannot but believe that the neglect of our people to observe the same care with fire in the woods that they exercise as a matter of course at home, the refusal of our legislatures to appropriate a few thousand dollars for fire prevention when they cheerfully do so many less urgent things, the infre

quency with which our courts punish violators of forest-fire laws, must be due to failure by those of us who are responsible for American education to impress a true comparison of values upon the public mind. Forest fires are a national calamity, akin to riot, invasion, and pestilence, and yet almost entirely unnecessary. Other countries avoid them. It follows that we can. It is only necessary to teach people that fires result from avoidable carelessness, that this criminally imperils human life, and that forest protection is prosperity insurance from which they themselves are certain gainers. That this is a considerable task is all the more reason for giving it far more thought and vigor than we have given.

Distinct from the individual citizen's personal responsibility and conduct is the manifestation of sentiment in the form of collective policy or endeavor. Considering the specific agencies most active and potent in forest conservation, we readily recognize three primary divisions of activity—federal, state, and private. It is desirable to know which can most effectively employ our assistance. In my opinion the government needs least help of the three. It was early to realize the need and has been the leader in reform. The federal forest service is our highest authority in technique; the national forests are our most conspicuous examples of practice. Altho the principles they represent by no means escape attack, fortunately they may be regarded as permanent institutions developing steadily for the better.

There is far greater need of attention to the situation of our states. Many have done nothing. Those that have done most have very generally developed certain lines at the sacrifice of others. Hardly any has a comprehensive farseeing policy which takes into account both present and future conditions and provides for systematic development as one replaces the other. Laws are passed in response to popular clamor or the insistence of a few tireless enthusiasts and sometimes they have excellent points. Often they contain weaknesses proven and discarded elsewhere long ago. The need of some action is increasingly admitted, but there is little grasp of the fundamental principles of forest legislation.

Here again we must divide the duty of the propagandist. To get and enforce forest legislation he must do the missionary work I have described to impress the community that it is profitable and necessary. He must also be competent to present good laws and prevent the passage of bad ones. He cannot know too much of the principles and technical framework which will insure freedom from politics, just distribution of the cost, effective organization, strict and enforceable fire laws, a systematic patrol and fire-fighting force, facilities for educating lumbermen and public, technical investigation of forest conditions and needs, acquisition and management of state-owned forest lands, and, above all, co-operation with and stimulation of endeavor by private forest owners. If he neglects these things, his very success in agitation may result in legislation worse than none.

All this involves considerable knowledge of the attitude of the private forest owner, which is usually given far too little study. After all he controls most of our forest area. His use of it, our use of it, and the effect of our relations upon our joint use of it, largely determine our forest destinies. The extent to which his conduct need be regulated, and the extent to which we can get equal or better results by encouragement instead of regulation, are matters of grave importance. H. S. Graves, chief forester for the United States, believes in the encouragement plan. He says, "Private owners do not practice forestry, for one or more of three reasons: first, the risk of fire; second, burdensome taxation; third, low price of products."

My own experience emphatically corroborates this. Whatever may be true of the past when new fields were easily available, the lumberman now sees his industry dependent upon forest preservation. No laws or threats are as potent to interest him in conservative management as the promise of continuing profit. In the Pacific and lake states at least (I know less of other regions), he leads the rest of the community in both advocating and practicing protective methods. The three states in the union making the most notable advance in forest legislation last winter were the three in which the timber industry led the campaign-Washington, Oregon, and Minnesota. The most efficient and liberally supported fire-preventive systems in America are the co-operative associations of the Pacific Northwest, where timber owners spent no less than seven hundred thousand dollars in 1910 to protect our forest resources. Admitting that their motive was largely selfish, the benefit to the public is the same.

The same is true of reforestation. The chief, if not the only, thing which prevents the private owner from adopting a course in this as advantageous to the public as his fire prevention, is his very fear of the public's attitude. And he has good reason for this fear. At the same time we demand that he practice forestry and threaten him with legal regulation if he refuses, we not only continue to imperil his proposed investment by fire, but also maintain a tax system that will confiscate it if it escapes. It seems to me inconsistent to preach forestry to the lumberman while we are ourselves responsible for a tax system that we know every country in the world had to abandon before it could have forestry. We are bound some day to pay for lumber what it costs to grow it. Obviously it will pay us to make its growing easy instead of difficult. If we make the growing impossible, we will not be able to get it at any price.

I have tried to show that many forces are working for better management of our forest resources. They are sure to succeed eventually, for economic laws leave no alternative. I have failed to be clear if it is not equally apparent that danger of too much delay lies in their working at cross purposes instead of in harmony. There must be more mutual understanding, less mutual suspicion, and more actual and constant co-operation.

These things alone will create public sentiment, teach proper methods, pass wise laws, and lessen cost to all concerned.

The moral is that what forest conservation asks most of educators now is not the teaching of more forestry practice so much as it is the teaching of forest economics. And while we make the most of every opportunity to teach the grown-up folks who can do things today, let us not forget that had these been taught in school, when they were more easily reached and impressed, they would not need it now. The young folks of today are the doers of tomorrow, and whether they do better than their parents depends much upon whether you see that they learn at least the elements of the problems I have discussed here.

WATER-POWERS, LANDS, AND MINERALS

GEORGE C. PARDEE, MEMBER OF NATIONAL CONSERVATION COMMISSION, OAKLAND, CAL.

"Water-powers, lands, and minerals" are the subjects that have been assigned to me for discussion. There are two principal ways in which these subjects may be handled from the standpoint of the conservationist. One way is to present a mass of statistics, confusing both to listeners and reader. That way I shall not follow. The other way is to discuss the subjects cursorily from the standpoint of the ordinary, everyday citizen, and to point out, from the standpoint of the conservationist, what is being done under present conditions with the water-powers, lands, and minerals, once the property of all the people, but now, to a very large extent, the property of a very few of the people.

The conservationists believe that the natural resources of the country that have not yet fallen into private ownership belong to all the people. They know, do the conservationists, that such of those natural resources as are necessary to the ordinary activities of the people have fallen largely into the hands of private owners. They also point to the fact that these private owners have very largely monopolized these natural resources and, using them for the purpose of quickly amassing enormous fortunes, are either destroying them absolutely or are withholding them from public use for the purpose of finally compelling the public, their former owners, to pay still greater prices for them or their products in the future.

The conservationists believe that all the natural resources should be used. But they also believe that none of them should be unnecessarily destroyed or wasted or put into cold storage, so to speak, in order that, not being used now, they may be used at some future time when, the supply being less than at present, famine prices may be charged for them.

The conservationists point to the fact, for instance, that for every ton of coal that has been put into use in this country practically another ton has been lost, destroyed, or wasted in the mine, not because that extra ton could