Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 73.djvu/186

182 it rages as in a Chicago or a San Francisco; and in its seething caldron disappears not only the last vestige of wood but the very soil itself.

Last of all follows the rain. This, falling upon denuded slopes, is transformed from a blessing into a curse; for whatever movable thing remains is swept by it down the mountainsides to glut the streams and harbors and insure the overflows which convert the streams of the south into so many Hoang-hos or "rivers of sorrow."

In the face of this process almost every legitimate interest of the south is menaced. Natural beauty disappears like the splendor of the butterfly clutched by the schoolboy. Agriculture, manufacturing, transportation and the industries tangent thereto are doomed to prodigious

losses and, in cases, to extinction. The whole region involved is threatened.

And the remedy? President Roosevelt, quoting and endorsing Secretary Wilson, has put it tersely: "The preservation of the forests, of the streams, and of the agricuturalagricultural [sic] interests here described can be successfully accomplished only by the purchase and creation of a national forest reserve." A cluster of thinkers, writers and publicists have borne similar testimony.

And why should a national forest reserve prove a remedy?

For this reason. There are in operation in our industrial life to-day two principles. The one is that of private initiative, individual profit and laissez faire; the other is that of public ownership, and