Life — December 19, 1907 — page 12: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

*LIFE: Save What Is Left of the Forests . IS an interesting house-party that the President has planned to have at the White House on the 13th, rqth and sth of next May. He has invited the governors of all the States and Territories and all the members of Congress to meet him on those days to confer with him, and with one another, upon the conservation of the natural resources of the United States. That means chiefly tim- ber and coal, and especially timber, because more can be done by government to protect the forests that are left than can be done as yct for the conservation of coal, iron, oil or anything that is under ground, We hope the governors will accept the President’s invitation, so far as they can, and that the meeting may lead to harmoni- ous and intelligent action. Nothing that President Roosevelt has done will stand more conspicuously to his credit in coming years than the support he has given to efforts to save the American forests. The effort began in President Benjamin Harrison’s time, was helped along earnestly by Mr. Cleveland and Mr. McKinley, and has been carried forward with great zeal by the present administration, working with Mr. Gifford Pinchot, the Forester of the Agricultural Department. The labors of the last fifteen years have resulted in the reservation by the government of 162,000,000 of forest lands (one-fifth of the wooded area of the country), all in States west of the Mississippi. The next Congress will be asked to provide for a great hardwood forest reserve of about 11,000,000 acres in the Eastern States, in the White Mountains and Appalachian Mountains. Some of this land is owned by States, some by dividuals, Some must be bought; much can be protected by the cooperation of State and Federal authorities. What is necessary is to provide immense tracts of wood- lands which will be systematically protected from fire and waste, and made by intelligent use and supervision to yield an annual supply of timber in perpetuity. Incidentally, these great forest tracts are the reservoirs that hold back water, diminish floods, and help the streams and rivers flowing. Nothing in sight is more important to the future welfare of the country than these great plans of forest reservation. Lum- ber is very dear now, and the President points out that at the present rate of use and waste our present forests will last not more than twenty-five years. The measures necessary to pro- vide our children and grandchildren with wood and water- power are comparable in importance with those we take to provide them with education. Mrs. Stevens Exaggerates RESIDENT STEVENS, of the W. C. T. U., says that undoubtedly more false statements are made in the en- deavor to show that prohibition in Maine is a failure than are made in connection with any other subject in any locality on the face of the globe. Tut, tut! We guess Mrs. Stevens has not heard all the state- ments made in the locality at the southern extremity of Man- hattan Island to show that President Roosevelt was the ex- clusive author of the recent panic. UNVEILING THE STATUE comicbooks.com