Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/402



The preceding papers have been written with the double purpose of showing conditions of life in Oregon as the writer has experienced them, and in order to indicate wherein they differed from the conditions of the Atlantic Coast, even as to the pioneer settlements, but especially as to flow of rivers and action of rain and wind on the soil; and the personal narrative has been used at the cost of diffuseness, in order to indicate the reasons for a difference of opinion as to the best form of a conservative forest policy as a national policy, from those who have so far controlled it. Believing in a general national conservative forest policy as firmly as the present able Chief Forester, and having practiced it in Oregon longer than he has lived, I feel constrained by my duties as a citizen to give the reasons for my position in the best form I may ; and what I shall have further to say will be in connection with differences between the Atlantic and the North Pacific Mountain States, as alluded to in the President's message to Congress in 1902, recommending the reforestration of the South Appalachian Mountains. While endorsing all that is humanly possible for the nation to legally do toward reclothing the South Appalachian Mountains with the best hardwood forests the climate and soils will carry, that are most suitable for the demands of future manufacturers, the object, I believe, will be best attained by instructing and encouraging private initiative and ownership. It will beyond