_Mr. Secretary, Gentlemen and Ladies_:
It is a pleasure to greet all of you here this afternoon, but of course
especially the members of the American Forest Congress. You have made,
by your coming, a meeting which is without parallel in the history of
forestry. And, Mr. Secretary, I must take this opportunity of saying
to you what you so amply deserve, that no man in this country has done
so much as you have done in the last eight years to make it possible
to take a business view from the standpoint of all the country of just
such questions as this. It is not many years since such a meeting as
this would have been regarded as chimerical; the thought of it would
have been regarded as absolutely chimerical. In the old pioneer days
the American had but one thought about a tree, and that was to cut it
down; and the mental attitude of the Nation toward the forests was
largely conditioned upon the fact that the life work of the earlier
generations of our people had been of necessity to hew down the
forests, for they had to make clearings on which to live; and it was
not until half a century of our national life had passed that any
considerable body of American citizens began to live under conditions
where the tree ceased to be something to be cleared off the earth.
It always takes time to get the mind of a people accustomed to any
change in conditions, and it took a long time to get the mind of our
people, as a whole, accustomed to the fact that they had to alter their
attitude toward the forests. For the first time the great business
and the forest interests of the Nation have joined together, through
delegates altogether worthy of the organizations they represent, to
consider their individual and their common interests in the forest.
This congress may well be called a meeting of forest users, for that
the users of the forest come together to consider how best to combine
use with preservation is the significant fact of the meeting, the fact
full of powerful promise for the forests of the future.
The producers, the manufacturers, and the great common carriers of the
Nation had long failed to realize their true and vital relation to the
great forests of the United States, and the forests and industries both
suffered from that failure. The suffering of the industries in such
case comes after the destruction of the forests, but it is just as
inevitable as that destruction. If the forest is destroyed it is only
a question of a relatively short time before the business interests
suffer in consequence. All of you know that there is opportunity in any
new country for the development of the type of temporary inhabitant
whose idea is to skin the country and go somewhere else. You all know,
and especially those of you from the West, the individual whose idea
of developing the country is to cut every stick of timber off of it
and then leave a barren desert for the homemaker who comes in after
him. That man is a curse and not a blessing to the country. The prop
of the country must be the business man who intends so to run his
business that it will be profitable for his children after him. That
is the type of business that it is worth while to develop. The time
of indifference and misunderstanding has gone by. Your coming is a
very great step toward the solution of the forest problem—a problem
which can not be settled until it is settled right. And it can not
be settled right until the forces which bring that settlement about
come, not from the Government, not even from the newspapers and from
public sentiment in general, but from the active, intelligent, and
effective interest of the men to whom the forest is important from the
business point of view, because they use it and its product and whose
interest is therefore concrete instead of general and diffuse. I do
not in the least underrate the power of an awakened public opinion;
but in the final test it will be the attitude of the industries of the
country which more than anything else will determine whether or not
our forests are to be preserved. It is because of their recognition
of that prime material fact that so much has been accomplished, Mr.
Wilson, by those interested under you and in the other departments
of the Government in the preservation of the forests. We want the
active and zealous help of every man farsighted enough to realize the
importance from the standpoint of the Nation’s welfare in the future
of preserving the forests; but that help by itself will not avail. It
will not even be the main factor in bringing about the result toward
which we are striving; the main factor must come from the intelligence
of the business interests concerned, so that the manufacturer, the
railway man, the miner, the lumberman, the dealer in lumber, shall
appreciate that it is of direct interest to them to preserve through
use instead of waste, the great resources upon which they depend for
the successful development of their business. This is true because by
far the greater part of all our forests must pass into the hands of
forest users, whether directly or through the Government, which will
continue to hold some of them, but only as trustee. The forest is for
use, and its users will decide its future. It was only a few years
ago that the practical lumberman felt that the forest expert was a
man who wished to see the forests preserved as bric-a-brac, and the
American business man was not prepared to do much from the bric-a-brac
standpoint. Now, I think, we have got a working agreement between the
forester and the business man whose business is the use of the forest.
We have got them to come together with the understanding that they must
work for a common end, work to see the forest preserved for use. The
great significance of this congress comes from the fact that henceforth
the movement for the conservative use of the forest is to come mainly
from within, not from without; from the men who are actively interested
in the use of the forest in one way or another, even more than from
those whose interest is philanthropic and general. The difference
means, as the difference in such a case always does mean, to a large
extent the difference between mere agitation and actual execution,
between the hope of accomplishment and the thing done. We believe that
at last forces have been set in motion which will convert the once
distant prospect of the conservation of the forest by wise use into the
practical accomplishment of that great end; and of this most hopeful
and significant fact the coming together of this congress is the
sufficient proof.
I shall not pretend this afternoon to even describe to you the place
of the forest in the life of any nation, and especially of its
place in the United States. The great industries of agriculture,
transportation, mining, grazing, and, of course, lumbering, are each
one of them vitally and immediately dependent upon wood, water, or
grass from the forest. The manufacturing industries, whether or not
wood enters directly into their finished product, are scarcely, if at
all, less dependent upon the forest than those whose connection with it
is obvious and direct. Wood is an indispensable part of the material
structure upon which civilization rests; and it is to be remembered
always that the immense increase of the use of iron and substitutes
for wood in many structures, while it has meant a relative decrease in
the amount of wood used, has been accompanied by an absolute increase
in the amount of wood used. More wood is used than ever before in our
history. Thus, the consumption of wood in shipbuilding is far larger
than it was before the discovery of the art of building iron ships,
because vastly more ships are built. Larger supplies of building lumber
are required, directly or indirectly, for use in the construction
of the brick and stone structures of great modern cities than were
consumed by the comparatively few and comparatively small wooden
buildings in the earlier stages of these same cities. It is as sure as
anything can be that we will see in the future a steadily increasing
demand for wood in our manufacturing industries. There is one point I
want to speak about in addition to the uses of the forest to which I
have already alluded. Those of us who have lived on the great plains,
who are acquainted with the conditions in parts of Oklahoma, Nebraska,
Kansas, and the Dakotas, know that wood forms an immensely portentous
element in helping the farmer on these plains battle against his
worst enemy—wind. The use of forests as windbreaks out on the plains,
where the tree does not grow unless men help it, is of enormous
importance, and, Mr. Wilson, among the many services performed by the
public-spirited statesman who once occupied the position that you now
hold, none was greater than what the late Secretary of Agriculture, Mr.
Morton, did in teaching, by actual example as well as by precept, the
people of the treeless regions the immense advantage of the cultivation
of trees. When wood, dead or alive, is demanded in so many ways, and
when this demand will undoubtedly increase, it is a fair question,
then, whether the vast demands of the future upon our forests are
likely to be met. You are mighty poor Americans if your care for the
well-being of this country is limited to hoping that that well-being
will last out your own generation. No man, here or elsewhere, is
entitled to call himself a decent citizen if he does not try to do
his part toward seeing that our national policies are shaped for the
advantage of our children and our children’s children. Our country, we
have faith to believe, is only at the beginning of its growth. Unless
the forests of the United States can be made ready to meet the vast
demands which this growth will inevitably bring, commercial disaster,
that means disaster to the whole country, is inevitable. The railroads
must have ties, and the general opinion is that no efficient substitute
for wood for this purpose has been devised. The miner must have timber
or he can not operate his mine, and in very many cases the profit
which mining yields is directly proportionate to the cost of timber
supply. The farmer, East and West, must have timber for numberless
uses on his farm, and he must be protected, by forest cover upon the
headwaters of the streams he uses, against floods in the East, and
the lack of water for irrigation in the West. The stockman must have
fence posts, and very often he must have summer range for his stock in
the national forest reserves. In a word, both the production of the
great staples upon which our prosperity depends and their movement in
commerce throughout the United States are inseparably dependent upon
the existence of permanent and suitable supplies from the forest at a
reasonable cost.
If the present rate of forest destruction is allowed to continue, with
nothing to offset it, a timber famine in the future is inevitable.
Fire, wasteful and destructive forms of lumbering, and the legitimate
use, taken together, are destroying our forest resources far more
rapidly than they are being replaced. It is difficult to imagine what
such a timber famine would mean to our resources. And the period of
recovery from the injuries which a timber famine would entail would
be measured by the slow growth of the trees themselves. Remember that
you can prevent such a timber famine occurring by wise action taken in
time, but once the famine occurs there is no possible way of hurrying
the growth of the trees necessary to relieve it. You have got to act
in time or else the Nation would have to submit to prolonged suffering
after it had become too late for forethought to avail. Fortunately,
the remedy is a simple one, and your presence here to-day is a most
encouraging sign that there will be such forethought. It is the great
merit of the Department of Agriculture in the forest work that its
efforts have been directed to enlist the sympathy and co-operation of
the users of wood, water, and grass, and to show that forestry will
and does pay, rather than to exhaust itself in the futile attempt
to introduce conservative methods by any other means. I believe
most emphatically in sentiment, but I want the sentiment to be put
into co-operation with the business interests, and that is what is
being done. The policy is one of helpfulness throughout, and never
of hostility or coercion toward any legitimate interest whatsoever.
In the very nature of things it can make little progress apart from
you. Whatever it may be possible for the Government to accomplish,
its work must ultimately fail unless your interest and support give
it permanence and power. It is only as the producing and commercial
interests of the country come to realize that they need to have trees
growing up in the forest not less than they need the product of the
trees cut down that we may hope to see the permanent prosperity of both
safely secured.
This statement is true not only as to forests in private ownership,
but as to the national forests as well. Unless the men from the
West believe in forest preservation the Western forests can not be
preserved. We here at the headquarters of the National Government
recognize that absolutely. We believe, we know, that it is essential
for the well-being of the people of the States of the great plains,
the States of the Rockies, the States of the Pacific Slope, that the
forests shall be preserved, and we know also that our belief will
count for nothing unless the people of those States themselves wish to
preserve the forests. If they do we can help materially; we can direct
their efforts, but we can not save the forests unless they wish them to
be saved.
I ask, with all the intensity that I am capable, that the men of the
West will remember the sharp distinction I have just drawn between
the man who skins the land and the man who develops the country. I am
going to work with, and only with, the man who develops the country.
I am against the land skinner every time. Our policy is consistent
to give to every portion of the public domain its highest possible
amount of use, and of course that can be given only through the hearty
co-operation of the Western people. I would like to add one word as
to the creation of a national forest service which I have recommended
repeatedly in messages to Congress, and especially in my last. I wish
to see all the forest work of the Government concentrated in the
Department of Agriculture. It is folly to scatter such work, as I have
said over and over again, and the policy which this Administration is
trying to carry out through the creation of such a service is that
of making the national forests more actively and more permanently
useful to the people of the West, and I am heartily glad to know
that the Western sentiment supports more and more vigorously the
policy of setting aside national forests, the creation of a national
forest service, and especially the policy of increasing the permanent
usefulness of these forest lands to all who come in contact with them.
With what is rapidly getting to be a practically unbroken sentiment
in the West behind such a forest policy, with what is rapidly getting
to be a practically unbroken support by the great stable interests
behind the general policy of the conservative use of the forests,
we have a right to feel that we have entered on an era of great and
lasting progress. Only entered upon it; much, very much, remains to be
done; and as in every other department of human activity our debt of
gratitude will be due, not to the amiable but shortsighted optimist
who thinks you have made a good beginning and the end may take care
of itself; still less to the man who sits at one side and says how
poorly the work is being done by those who are doing it; but to the
men who try, each in his own place, practically to forward this great
work. That is the type of man who is going to do the work, and it is
because I believe that we have enlisted the active, practical sympathy
of just that kind of man in this work that I believe the future of
this policy to be bright and the permanence of our timber supplies
more nearly assured than at any previous time in our history. To the
men represented in this congress this great result is primarily due.
In closing, I wish to thank you who are here, not merely for what you
are doing in this particular movement, but for the fact that you are
illustrating what I hope I may call the typically American method of
meeting questions of great and vital importance to the Nation—the
method of seeing whether the individuals particularly concerned can not
by getting together and co-operating with the Government do infinitely
more for themselves than it would be possible for any Government under
the sun to do for them. I believe in the future of this movement,
because I think you have the right combination of qualities—the quality
of individual initiative, the quality of individual resourcefulness,
combined with the quality that enables you to come together for mutual
help, and having so come, to work with the Government; and I pledge you
in the fullest measure the support of the Government in what you are
doing.
SPEECH AT THE DINNER OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECTS, AT THE
ARLINGTON HOTEL, WASHINGTON, D. C., JAN. 11, 1905
_Mr. President, Your Eminence, Gentlemen_:
It is a great pleasure to have the chance of coming here this evening
and saying a word of greeting to a body of men who are engaged in
doing work for this Republic which is to count, not merely in the
present generation, but during the lifetimes of many generations to
come. We hear a great deal said about true Americanism. Now the real
American, the American whom it is worth while to call such, is the man
whose belief in and work for America are not merely for the America of
to-day, but for the America of the future.
It is a comparatively easy thing to do work when the reward is to
come in the present; but every great nation that has ever existed on
this globe has been great because its sons had in them the capacity
to work for the well-being of generations yet unborn. Such a spirit
is peculiarly necessary when the work that we desire to have done
is essentially work of a non-remunerative type, non-remunerative in
more than one way; non-remunerative in money, and it may be in fame.
We do not know the names of the architects and builders of the great
cathedrals whose magnificent beauty is an heirloom to civilization.
We do not know the names of the builders of the great majority of the
works to which every man with an aspiration after beauty naturally
turns when he thinks of the past. We owe that beauty, we owe the
elevation of thought, of mind and soul, that come with association and
belief in it, to the fact that there were a sufficient number of men
who worked in the spirit that Ruskin prayed for—the spirit of doing
work not for the sake of the fee, but for the sake of the work itself.
There are things in a nation’s life more important than beauty; but
beauty is very important. And in this Nation of ours, while there is
very much in which we have succeeded marvelously, I do not think that
if we look dispassionately at what we have done we will say that beauty
has been exactly the strong point of the Nation. It rests largely
with gatherings such as this, with the note that is set by men such
as those I am addressing to-night, to determine whether or not this
shall be true of the future. A very large percentage of the durable
work, the work which is lasting, and therefore the beauty of which,
if it exists, is also lasting, must be done by the Government. Many
great buildings and beautiful buildings will be created by private
effort; but many of the greatest buildings must necessarily be erected
by the Government, national, State, or municipal. Those in control of
any branch of that Government necessarily have but an ephemeral lease
of power. Administration succeeds administration; Congress succeeds
Congress; Legislature succeeds Legislature; and even if all of the
administrations, all of the Congresses, are actuated (a not necessarily
probable supposition) by an artistic spirit, it would still remain true
that there could not be coherence in their work if they had to rely
on themselves alone. The best thing that any administration, that any
executive department of the Government, can do—and if I may venture
to make any suggestion to the co-ordinate branch, Senator Cockrell, I
would say that the best thing that any elective legislative body could
do—is in these matters to surrender itself, within reasonable limits,
to the guidance of those who really do know what they are talking
about. The only way in which we can hope to have worthy artistic work
done for the Nation or for a State or for a municipality, is by having
such a growth of popular sentiment as will render it incumbent upon
successive administrations, successive legislative bodies, to carry out
steadily a plan chosen for them, worked out for them by such a body
of men as that gathered here this evening. What I have said does not
mean that we shall here in Washington, for instance, go into immediate
and extravagant expenditures on public buildings. All that it means is
that, whenever hereafter a public building is provided for and erected,
it should be erected in accordance with a carefully thought out plan
adopted long before; and that it should be not only beautiful in
itself, but fitting in its relations to the whole scheme of the public
buildings, the parks, the drives of the District.
Working through municipal commissions, very great progress has already
been made in rendering more beautiful our cities, from New York to San
Francisco. An incredible amount remains to be done. But a beginning
has been made, and now I most earnestly hope that in the National
Capital a better beginning will be made than anywhere else, and that
can be made only by utilizing to the fullest degree the thought and the
disinterested effort of the architects, the artists, the men of art,
who stand foremost in their professions here in the United States, and
who ask no other reward than the reward of feeling that they have done
their full part to make as beautiful as it should be the capital city
of the great Republic.
ADDRESS AT LUTHER PLACE MEMORIAL CHURCH, WASHINGTON, D. C., JAN. 29,
1905