PART I.

EXISTING CONDITIONS.

EFFECTS OF FORESTS ON THE COUNTRY.

Prosperity and habitation are separated from poverty and desolation by forests.

Financially, forests are the most important factors in the existence of a country. The forest industries are second only to the agricultural interests and they are far ahead of those of the earthy products, that is, of the mines, quarries, etc. Twenty per cent. of the capital of the United States, or $2,250,000,000,* is invested in wood industries. Seventeen per cent. of all the manufactured products, having a value of $3,000,000,000,* comes from forest

resources.

When wood is put on the market in its final form, it is probably eight or ten times more valuable than it was as it stood as a tree in the woods and practically all of this difference has gone into wages of the men employed in working it up into this state.

Just stop for a moment and consider what it means to cut all the lumber that is used in the United States for the building of our houses, our factories, our steam and electric cars, our ships, and beyond this use for construction, the immense amount of material going into telegraph and telephone poles, railroad ties, boxes, barrels, furniture, wood pulp, wood alcohol, fire wood, tan bark, matches, spools, charcoal, baskets, wagons, excelsior, and even toothpicks.

So much for the direct effect of the forests on the wealth of this country. If it were possible to compute in dollars and cents the indirect effect of our forests, the value would far outweigh even that of agriculture. These indirect effects of forests are principally through their acting as reservoirs for the rains and in preventing erosion. The forests also act as great moderators of temperature and evaporation, and great, free, natural hospitals for mankind.

Forests do not have any appreciable effect on the actual amount of rain which falls. They do, however, greatly affect the moisture conditions of a country, by acting as great sponges, which soak up the water when it falls as rain or melts from snow, and later giving it off gradually to the soil beneath or to the trees above.

*Circular 171, U. S. For. Ser.

This power of the forest to act as a sponge is largely due to the composition of the forest floor, which is made up of leaf mould or duff. The leaf mould or duff is of a peaty formation and practically all of vegetable origin. It has a greater capacity for holding water than practically any other substance.

Picture to yourself what it means when rain falls on the hill or mountain sides, which have been denuded of forests and the leaf mould burned off by forest fire. Oftentimes the fire has burned down to bed rock and there is no chance at all for the rain to soak in. If there is soil left, it is of a mineral nature, compact and baked hard by the sun. When rain strikes it, it runs off almost as though the hillsides were asphalt or sheathed with tin. Consequently there are tremendous floods during the rainy seasons and dry stream beds during the remainder of the year.

Now think of a well-forested mountain side. The descending rain first strikes the leaves and later works down through them, saturating the tree and the debris on the ground, finally striking the humus, where it is eagerly sucked in. Even with the hardest of rains there is very little chance of an immediate run-off, as this cannot occur until the duff is completely saturated with water, and this rarely occurs.

The water gradually works down through the duff and is slowly taken in by the mineral soil; then slowly works through the mineral soil toward the streams and finally emerges as springs to keep the river full during the dry months. Investigations by the United States Department of Agriculture have definitely determined that the amount of rainfall in the Rocky Mountains has a direct bearing on the height of the water in the wells of Iowa; therefore do not be misguided into thinking that it is only the immediate region of the forest that is benefited.

Evaporation from a duff soil is only about half what the evaporation from a bare mineral soil is and the forest thus conserves moisture in two ways, first by storing it and second by refusing to give it up.

Let us return for a moment to deforested conditions. When the rain strikes the mineral soil it immediately starts down hill and as it increases in quantity it begins to wear on the surface soil and gather in soil particles as it rushes along. By the time the main stream is reached the water is laden with these soil particles; in other words, it is muddy. Every rain washes more and more soil away. The root fibres the old forces which bound the soil

together in the day when the forests covered the slopes — are gone,