Checking the Waste Part 3

Phosphorus. Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin.

The Present Status of the Nitrogen Problem. Yearbook Dept. of Agriculture Reprint, 411.

The Search for Leguminous Forage Crops. Yearbook Dept. of Agriculture Reprint, 478.

Leguminous Crops. Yearbook Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin, 278.

Progress in Legume Inoculation. Yearbook Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin, 315.

A Grain for Semi-arid Lands. Yearbook Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin, 139.

The Sugar-Beet. Yearbook Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin, 52.

Dry-Land Problems in the Great Plains Area. Yearbook Dept. of Agriculture Reprint, 461.

Reports of Dry Farming Congress.

The Natural Wealth of the Land. J. J. Hill, Report Governor's Conference.

National Wealth and the Farm. J. J. Hill.

CHAPTER III

FORESTS

Aside from the soil itself, which supports all life, there is no other resource so important to man as the forests, with their many uses covering so wide a range.

The beauty and restfulness of a forest, the grace and dignity of single trees, the shade for man and animals, the shelter from storms--all these things appeal to our love for the beautiful, and touch our higher nature. The person who loves trees is a better person than the one who does not. As the poet expresses it:

"Ah, bare must be the shadeless ways, and bleak the path must be, Of him, who, having open eyes, has never learned do see, And so has never learned to love the beauty of a tree.

"Who loves a tree, he loves the life that springs in star and clod, He loves the love that gilds the clouds, and greens the April sod, He loves the wide Beneficence; his soul takes hold on G.o.d."

Trees have played an important part in the history of our country: The "Charter Oak," in the hollow of which the original charter of Connecticut remained hidden from the agents of the king; "Eliot's Oak,"

under which the gospel was first preached to the Indians; the wide-spreading elm under which William Penn signed his treaty of peace with the Indians.

But no tree has held so dear a place in the hearts of the people, or been so watchfully cared for as the old "Was.h.i.+ngton Elm" still standing in Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts. Under it Was.h.i.+ngton took command of the continental army. It is visited every year by hundreds of persons, who stand with uncovered heads beneath its spreading branches. Many years ago it was struck by lightning and the upper part torn off, but all the broken edges have been sealed with pitch to stop decay. It has been covered with fine wire netting to prevent the bark being chipped off by relic hunters. It is carefully guarded from damage by insects, and the boughs are stayed by strong wires.

And so we might name many instances of trees that are loved and cared for on account of their beauty, stateliness or some event connected with them, but it is the usefulness of trees that we shall mention in this chapter.

In the larger use of forests is included their effect on climate and rainfall. It is generally believed that clouds, pa.s.sing over the damp, cool air that rises from a forest, are more likely to be condensed into rain, and so we can establish the general rule that the country which is well wooded will probably have a larger rainfall than the one which has few trees.

Twenty-five years ago Kansas was a prairie state with few trees, and the semi-arid plains extended half-way across the state, but thousands of acres of trees have been planted, and crops have been cultivated, and the more forests and crops the farmer plants the more rain comes to water them. The great droughts which used to ruin their crops year after year no longer disturb them. The hot winds which could undo a whole season's hard work in a day are seldom heard of now. Kansas is no longer in the semi-arid region. It is one of the most productive states in the Union, and this has come, not by dry-farming, but by the cultivation of the soil and by the planting of trees.

Though rainfall increases, destructive floods become fewer, for the humus and the leaves on the ground in the forests hold the water as in a vast sponge, and, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, they keep the waters in check and distribute the rainfall gently and evenly on the lands below. They thus prevent erosion of the hillsides and balance the water supply of rivers.

Trees supply us with food and medicine, and greatest of all their direct uses, they furnish lumber for all kinds of manufacturing.

We can not think of life without the comforts and conveniences that we get from wood; but interior China affords a striking example of what it means for a nation to have a very small supply. There is no wood for manufacturing and the natives search the hillsides for even the tiniest shrubs to burn and even for gra.s.s scratched from the soil. Once this part of China was a great forest region, but century by century the forests have been used, not rapidly, as in this country, for China is not a great industrial nation, but surely, until there is hardly a twig left.

China is not the only nation that has suffered in this way. Many of the ancient peoples have entirely pa.s.sed away; and the destruction of their forests, as we have seen in the previous chapter, was the first cause leading to their extinction.

Denmark was originally almost covered with forests. These were cut down for fuel, for lumber, and to make way for agriculture. For a long time there was no attempt to restore them, and now a large area, once productive, has become a sandy desert. In the same way, large parts of Austria and Italy have become valueless because the growing forests were cut down.

In France the forests at the head-waters of the Rhone and the Seine were cut down and fierce floods began to pour down the valleys each year, bringing destruction to property and crops all along their way. But France has long ago learned the lesson of forestry, and as soon as the danger was seen, the mountain sides were replanted with trees, and since then conditions have been gradually changing for the better.

France has had another experience in forestry that has taught her what can be done to save her waste lands. Near the coast were great sand-dunes. The winds drove them each year farther inland, and the sand was gradually driving out the vineyards and farm crops. In 1793 the planting of forests on these dunes was begun. Of 350,000 acres, 275,000 have been planted in valuable pine forests. More than half of these belong to private owners and there is no record of their value, but the portion belonging to the government has yielded a large income above all expenses, and is worth $10,000,000 as land; and this was not only valueless but was a menace to the surrounding country. In the interior of France a sandy marsh covering 2,000,000 acres has been changed into a profitable forest valued at $100,000,000.

A hundred years ago all the eastern part of the United States and the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific coast region were covered with thick forests hundreds and hundreds of miles in extent. Evergreens--the pines, hemlocks, cedars and spruces--grew near the coast in great abundance, while farther inland were found the most magnificent hardwood forests in the world.

Unfortunately, the first needs of the early settlers required them to cut down these mighty forests. The soil, which was very fertile, could not, of course, be used for farming purposes until the land was cleared, and so this was the first necessity.

The wood was used to build the cabins, to make the rude furniture, the wagons and ox-carts, and for fuel, but this disposed of only a small amount of the wood that came from the clearing of a farm. No man could give it to his neighbor when all had more than they could use, and there was no market for its sale. The trees were burned in large quant.i.ties to clear the land for the planting of crops.

Wood was of the greatest value to the first settlers, but it was also the greatest hindrance to their making homes, so they took no care whatever of what they could not use. It was burned or left on the ground to decay. As towns sprang up, there began to be a demand for lumber for houses, for furniture, for vehicles and for fuel from those who had no trees of their own. This made a market for the best grades of lumber at a low price, but almost every farmer would give away trees of the best hardwood to any person who would cut and haul them away.

Conditions have changed very slowly, but very surely. In every state, in every county and in every towns.h.i.+p there has been a steady clearing of the land as it fills with new home-makers. At the same time the demand has grown enormously each year from the dwellers in cities.

The opening up of railroads and telegraph lines in the middle and latter part of the century made a great demand for wood. The building of s.h.i.+ps and steamboats, the opening of mines, the establis.h.i.+ng of telephone and trolley systems, the building of great cities, all these have called steadily and increasingly for wood.

The time has long pa.s.sed when wood was a hindrance to progress. For a long time there has been a ready market at high prices and it is rapidly reaching the point where we shall face an actual shortage of timber.

This is not true of all parts of the country, of course. Maine, Was.h.i.+ngton, and parts of Oregon, Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi, Wisconsin and some other states, still have vast quant.i.ties of lumber, but trains and s.h.i.+ps carry it to all parts of the world so there is no lack of a market.

The change from plenty, even great excess, to need, has come so gradually that few persons, even those living in the forest regions, have realized until within a very few years how general is their destruction. Those who, riding about a small portion of the country familiar to them, have been struck with the disappearance of the woods and the cultivation of the lands, have looked upon it wholly as a sign of progress, and have not realized that the same thing is going on in every part of the country.

The wholesale destruction of the forests, without replanting, has come mostly from ignorance. We have had all our resources in such great abundance that we have not hitherto needed to learn the lessons that the Old World has learned, sometimes at the cost of whole nations, but the time has come when we _do_ need to learn them.

The first lesson is to study the various uses of the forests, to find how they are being affected by present use, their wastes, and the best means of preserving them. When all the people have learned these lessons, they will, undoubtedly, gladly set about righting the wrongs that have been done in the past.

The original forests of this country covered an area of about 850,000,000 acres, with nearly five and a half trillion board feet of "merchantable," that is, salable, timber according to present standards.

(A board foot is one foot long, one foot wide and one inch in thickness.) Considerably more than half the original number of acres are still forested, but most of the land has been cut or burned over, some of it several times, and the amount remaining of salable timber, which includes only the best part of the trunk, is from two to two and a half trillion, that is from 1,400 to 2,000 billion, feet. The yearly cut for all purposes, including waste, is now over two hundred billion board feet;--some authorities place the amount as high as two hundred and seventy-five billion feet. This, however, probably includes firewood, one of the largest uses of wood, but taken very largely from worm-eaten wood that could not be cut into lumber. It also probably includes boughs, and other unsalable parts of the tree.

The timber cut doubled from 1880 to 1905, is still increasing at almost the same rate, and, if we had the timber, it would doubtless double again by 1930. But even at the present rate, the forests now standing, without allowance for growth, would be exhausted in from ten to sixteen years. The yearly growth of timber in our present forests is estimated at from forty-two to sixty billion feet, and the yearly cut at from three to three and a half times the amount added for growth.

That is, we are using in four months at least as much wood as will naturally grow in a year. The other eight months we shall be using our forest reserves, and each year there will be less forest land to produce new growth, as well as less old wood to cut.

Mr. R. A. Long, an expert lumberman who spoke before the first Conservation Congress, estimated then that the forests, making allowance for growth, would not last over thirty-five years. The government figures indicate that they will last about thirty-three years, at the present rate, but as the rate has been doubling every twenty-five years, many persons who have studied the situation believe that the supply will not continue in commercial quant.i.ties for manufacturing more than twenty-five years.

We must understand, must think, what the destruction of our forests would mean to us. It would mean fierce droughts and fiercer floods. It would mean the gradual drying up of our streams, a scarcity of water to drink, as in China to-day. It would mean that the manufacture of wooden articles would practically cease. The thousand conveniences that we enjoy as a matter of course would become rare and costly. It would mean that only the rich could build houses of wood, and this would force the ma.s.ses of people into crowded quarters, not only the poor, but the well-to-do also. These are only a few of the many disasters that would follow the loss of our forests, and all these things might come to pa.s.s before we ourselves are old!

If we knew that at a certain time a tidal wave would engulf our homes, how we should work to save all that we could before the calamity overtook us! And we should set about the saving of our forests with equal care, for their destruction means distress for every one of us.

Fortunately, this is only the dark possibility. The methods of prevention are well known to those who have studied the history of the nations that have fallen, and the nations that have risen to power. It is only necessary that all the people should know these things and realize their importance, in order to keep conditions as they are at present or even to better them.

The methods of prevention are five. They are: