Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/53

Rh should, if possible, be regained by the Government and reserved.

Steps of that kind have fortunately been taken with regard to the Adirondacks in New York, but those steps have unfortunately been too long delayed, for, as is reported, the destruction of the Adirondack forests has already gone far enough to cause a diminution of the reliable water supply in the Mohawk and Hudson rivers of from thirty to fifty per cent.; nor have they proved effective and comprehensive enough, for that destruction is still going on at a distressing rate. As to Pennsylvania, a service of incalculable value would be rendered to her people if the State regained control over the forest lands in the heart of her mountain regions, for the hand of the destroyer is mercilessly active. A few years ago I happened, on a railroad inspection, to penetrate into the mountains of northwestern Pennsylvania and beheld a spectacle of direful import. A corporation, a large majority of whose stock was said to be held in Massachusetts, had acquired an area of forest land of, if I remember rightly, 200,000 acres. They not only cut down every tree, but they destroyed even the underbrush, not leaving a stick or a shoot standing. They made the mountainsides as bare as the palm of my hand. And when I asked the superintending officer of the company what was meant by this radical destruction, which would not even leave a chance for the forest to grow up on these slopes in the future, the answer was, that the company did not wish the forest to grow up there again; it was its object first to sell the logs and then to clear the land for the purpose of selling it as pasture. It is not hazardous to predict that when those mountainsides have been washed by rain for a few seasons, many, if not most of them, will no longer furnish verdure enough to nourish a goat. Such things are going on in the mountains of Pennsylvania, and