Read Ebook: Trotwood's Monthly Vol. I No. 1 October 1905 by Various Moore John Trotwood Editor

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TROTWOOD'S MONTHLY

VOL. 1. NASHVILLE, TENN., OCTOBER, 1905. NO. 1

Luther Burbank

JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE.

Benefits of Forestry to Farmers

BY PERCY BROWN, OF EWELL FARM.

Note.--Mr. Brown is a practical forester, having been chief forester for the Houston Oil Co. and a graduate of Biltmore Forest School.--Ed.

The preservation of our forests is an imperative business necessity. We have come to see that whatever destroys the forest, except to make way for agriculture, threatens our well being.--President Roosevelt.

With abundant supplies of timber for farm consumption, farmers of the South have been inclined to regard the question of forest preservation merely as a matter of sentiment, and have come to look upon the forester as an impracticable sort of sentimentalist, whose main object in life is to keep some lumberman from cutting his timber.

This indifference has resulted in the loss of the support of the farming element to the cause of forestry, whereas the lumberman who at one time considered the forester his natural enemy and the forestry cause a clog in the wheels of progress, immediately began to investigate the question with a view of combatting forest legislation and the creation of a forestry sentiment throughout the country.

The result was that a thorough understanding of the objects of forestry and the aims of the forester has caused the lumbermen and lumber associations to give their unqualified support to all practical forestry legislation. And in the Southern States we find that the only journal of any importance that is persistently advocating forestry as a business is one of the foremost lumber journals south of the Ohio River.

The silence that the farm journals of the country have maintained on the question can be explained only by their ignorance of the question and its important bearing on the agricultural interests of the entire country. And as it is the purpose of this magazine to discuss all questions of vital importance as well as those that will be of passing interest to the farmers of the whole country it is well to begin with an understanding of what forestry is, and to advance a few reasons why the farmer should be the most ardent advocate of forestry.

Dr. W. H. Schlich, the noted English forester, says the task with which "forestry has to deal is to ascertain the principles according to which forests shall be managed and to apply these principles to the treatment of the forests."

Dr. B. E. Fernow, formerly chief of the Division of Forestry, defines it as "The rational treatment of forests for forest purposes."

Dr. C. A. Schenck, of the Biltmore Forest School, gives the following very broad and terse definition: "Forestry is the proper handling of forest investments."

We see from these definitions that the forestry is purely a matter of business differing only from other investments in the time element. A forestry venture cannot be undertaken with a view of getting immediate returns, but contemplates the continuity of the investment which makes it the first duty of the forester to determine what is the best use the forest can be put to in order to obtain the greatest annual return upon the investment without drawing upon his capital invested. This does not necessarily mean that his forest must be devoted entirely to the production of timber, it may be maintained as a game preserve, or as a watershed, in which case the returns to be obtained from the sale of timber will be a secondary consideration.

Consequently we see that the forester is not merely a botanist or a tree planter, but in the fullest sense of the term is a technically educated man, with the knowledge of the forest trees and their history and of all that pertains to their production, combines further knowledge which enables him to manage forest property so as to produce certain conditions resulting in the highest attainable revenue from the soil by wood-crops.

The effect of forest cover and water-flow has been so persistently and constantly proclaimed as the one great need for forest preservation that the more important one of supply has been neglected.

In a series of articles by Dr. Fernow, on "The Outlook of the Timber Supply in the United States" , after carefully considering the data compiled by the Chief Geographer, together with his personal investigations, he summarizes the situation, which justifies the urgent need of the forester's art in the United States, from the point of view of supplies, as follows:

That this is a question of serious importance to the South, as well as to the whole country, is shown by the great increase in the South's production of lumber, which, owing to the depletion in other sections of the country, has risen from eleven and nine-tenths per cent in 1880 to twenty-five and two-tenths per cent of the total output of the United States in 1900, and it is not hard to predict an even greater production for 1910, when one concern alone has increased the number of its mills in the long leaf pine belt from seven to fifteen, and its daily output from 500,000 to 1,000,000 feet during the period from 1900 to 1904.

Basing their estimates upon the present standards of grading, the hardwood lumber journals are predicting the total exhaustion of the available supplies of this timber in fifteen years, and the hardwood lumbermen are already looking to forestry as a means of relief.

In an address delivered before the third annual meeting of the Hardwood Manufacturers' Association of the United States, as an introduction to the subject of "The Hardwood Producing Centers of the United States," Mr. John W. Love, of Nashville, said:

"I hope to be able to briefly call the attention of this body of practical manufacturers to a few pertinent facts that may, in a measure, at least, open our eyes to a painful truth, viz., the rapidly decreasing area of hardwood timber in the United States, and when we consider how very little is being done to conserve our forest growth--how the forests are being cleaned from hoop-poles to giant oaks, and that to supply the one item of cross ties that are used in this country alone, about 4,000,000,000 feet of timber is required , and a large proportion of these ties are cut from thrifty young trees, we must conclude that a matter so weighty as to give us pause. The one hopeful sign of the future is the hope that practical forestry methods may be enforced by the Government."

This in an address from a lumberman to an association of lumber manufacturers is indeed an encouraging sign of the times, but I fear he has waked up "to the realization that our efforts to secure a more rational treatment of our forest resources and apply forestry in their management are not too early, but rather too late: that they are by no means sufficient; that serious trouble and inconvenience are in store for us in the not too distant future; that the blind indifference and the dallying or amateurish playing with the problem of legislatures and officials is fatal."

The railroads and the farmers of the Western plains were among the first to appreciate the importance of making provision for a future supply of construction timber and material for use on the farms.

With the far-sighted policy of manipulators of great corporations, the officials of the Santa Fe Railroad were among the pioneers in forest planting in America on railroads, as about twenty years ago they planted 1,280 acres in hardy catalpa at a total expense of 8,000, and they estimated that at the end of twenty-five years from date of planting this tract will have produced ,500,000 of poles, ties and posts.

A few years ago the Illinois Central made a plantation of catalpa and black locust in Illinois and during the current year the Louisville & Nashville Railroad have arranged for a similar plantation in Alabama.

It has not been necessary for the farmers of the South to resort to plantations for their supplies of posts and fuel, and if we are not improvident of our supplies it will hardly become necessary, as we have left on nearly every farm enough timber of suitable varieties from which we can procure our future supplies by self-sown seed, provided the sections to be reserved for timber growth are protected from stock and fires. In some instances, however, it may prove cheaper and more expedient to plant as was the case with the now famous yaggy catalpa plantation near Hutchinson, Kan., in which a ten-year-old block showed a net value of 7, or a yearly net income of .75 per acre.

And a twenty-five-year-old plantation of red juniper, belonging to F. C. F. Schutz, Menlo, Iowa, showed a net value of 0.54 per acre, or a yearly net income of about --not a bad showing for forestry, when we bear in mind that the net income from other farm crops seldom exceeds that amount, but from the farm crops the returns are secured annually, while in the case of a forestry investment there is quite a period preceding the first harvest, during which we have to figure in an accumulative value.

All wood-lot planting should be governed by the local demand, for that reason it would be hard to suggest either methods or species for the South as a whole, but generally speaking, black locust , hardy catalpa, mulberry and chestnut would be the most desirable, as the first three would be quickly available for fence posts, and the chestnut would always be in demand for telephone and telegraph poles as well as furnishing construction timber.

Wood-lot forestry has the advantage over similar work conducted on a large scale, as the farmer is at no expense for protection or supervision, the location of forest on the farm assures its safety from fire or trespass, and he gives it his personal attention.

However, to secure the most desirable management his supervision should be carried on under the direction of trained foresters.

To secure this without appreciable additional cost it is to his interest to ally himself with those who are striving for a State forestry system, under which a forester would be employed whose duty would be to look after the State reserves and give advice to farmers and timber land owners on the management of all forest tracts set aside for permanent forest investments.

The indirect utility of the forests is well known and appreciated by those who have given the matter any thought, but the average American farmer has little use for a thing which does not appeal to him in dollars and cents, however, the Bureau of Forestry realizing the great importance of this matter to the agricultural interests, sent Mr. J. W. Twomey to the San Bernardino Mountains of California to conduct investigations of the "Relation of Forests to Stream Flow," and in the "Year-Book" of the Department of Agriculture for 1904 he reports these conclusions:

"In humid regions, where the precipitation is fairly evenly distributed over the year, and where the catchment area is sufficiently large to permit the greater part of the seepage to enter the stream above the point where it is gauged, the evidence accumulated to date indicates that stream flow is materially increased by the presence of forests.

"In regions characterized by the short wet season and a long dry one, as in Southern California and many other portions of the West, present evidence indicates, at least on small mountainous catchment areas, that the forest very materially decreases the total amount of run-off.

"Although the forest may have, on the whole, but little appreciable effect in increasing the rainfall and the annual run-off, its economic importance in regulating streams is beyond computation. The great indirect value of the forest is the effect which it has in preventing wind and water erosion, thus allowing the soil on hills and mountains to remain where it is formed, and in other ways providing an adequate absorbing medium at the sources of the water courses of the country. It is the amount of water that passes into the soil, not the amount of rainfall, that makes a garden or a desert."

With such evidence as this before them, what farmer in the South will dare question the importance of forestry to the agricultural interests of every section of the South, and especially those sections lying adjacent to streams having their sources in the territory of the proposed Appalachian Forest Reserve?

The South to-day is pre-eminent in agriculture and timber production, but the wasteful destruction of our forest resources bids fair to transfer the laurels to the great undeveloped West, where we find over 60,000,000 acres of forest reserves, which will for all time to come offer a continuous supply of lumber for the manufacturer and an abundance of water for the farmers who have made a garden of the deserts.

It is the duty of the Southern farmer to join with the hardwood lumberman in his efforts to introduce forestry in the South, and by so doing give to succeeding generations the heritage that except for the destructive forces of man would have come to them in nature's great scheme of things.

TO THE CAHABA RIVER

Ay, laugh along, thou cypress-crown'd stream, Thou echo of the cloud's kiss on the hills, A Southern maid with eyes of deep-pool gleam And cheeks of dimpled whorls and smiles of rills.

Dance, sweet, on sward of violet-crested green, Marked with the silvery pathway of thy track-- With blue embossing ridge of hills between And hair mist in the soft wind floating back.

And sweet with soul of aromatic leaves, Steeped in thy crucible of sun-warmed pool, And with the warm breath of the bay, that grieves His love-sigh out amid thy shadows cool.

Dance, sweet, adown thy pathway's wooded hush, Laughing to 'scape the red arms of the hills, Yet bringing on thy cheek the telltale blush, For chattering tongues of all the old dame mills.

The live-oak bends to kiss thee, and his sigh Is mingled with the passing of thy charms; The willows start from hidden coverts by To clasp thee in their looping, lover arms.

Is that deep shadow dark'ning now thine eye Repentant sorrow for the willow's plight, As though the stern gloom of the cypress nigh Thou speedest like a Naiad of the night?

O life--life--life--and hast thou found it so, A journey now in sunlight, now in shade-- A laughter from the willows bending low A gloom-sob which the cypresses have made?

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