Show help save our forests by ELMO SCOTT WATSON a few weeks dent cooledge will be la suing his annual procla matlon for american for est week during which time ali americans are urged to turn their at to the problem of saving our vanishing ores and to operate cooperate co by every means possible to that end As usual the leaders in the observance of this boek will be the officials of the amer lean tree association headed by charles lathrop pack the president in anticipation of that observance the association some time ago an bounced a cartoon contest in which a series of prizes were offered for the best cartoons drawn by amateurs the judges of alie contest were mrs john sherman president of the general federation of women s clubs john hays hammond jay N darling ding noted cartoonist of the lew ork herald tribune col B breeley chief forester of the united states forest service and dr john T fanley of the hev lork almes these judges recently an bounced the prize winners among the cartoons which were entered in the content and came from every state in the union and two for countries the seven winning drawings will be used in the associations educational arve during american forest week in and will be especially valuable because the pictured lesson which they will attach can be understood by everybody even those alio are un able to read for that reason the seven winning cartoonists will have the satisfaction of that their efforts were not only rewarded with cash prizes but with the satisfaction ot that they have performed a patriotic duty in helping save our forests they are the following first prize sam E ash jr tyler texas second ffoyd gottfredson utah third 50 richard W tipper washington D C fourth 25 james T shatter lancaster N Y fifth 25 F D miller denver colo sixth 25 Bruce russell sierra madec calif seventh 25 william L addkinson jackson miss saving the forests which we now have Is only one part of the effort of the american tree association even more important Is the matter of bringing to the attention of the na alon the amount of idle land in ahli country and bow this land can be llred in forest production this part of the problem Is being taken care of by the educational work of the charles pack forestry trust one phase of this work has been the of forestry primers to the schools of the nation the millions of acres of idle land in this country mr pack davs roust be put to work growing trees because the economic structure of the country de upon wood in its thousands of uses the printed word and the car toon make up pirt of the ammunition in the united states the center of the lumber industry Is in the rocky moun tain region far removed from the great manufacturing centers the points of great consumption of forest products the american tree assoria alon points states like new york pennsylvania michigan once the cen ter of the industry now import lum ber over long hauls to keep their fac going in contrast with such a situation Is that in sweden the annual growth of timber in Sw edens forests now es e s ceede the annual cutting by nearly cubic feet according to a study of the sweetish forestry system by trade commissioner ehll keilch of the department of commerce this result alie report declares has been accomplished through forestry practice making extensive areas more pro and through closer utilization which has relatively reduced cutting without question timber growing Is the outstanding feature in the indus trial economy ol 01 sweden at the pros ent lime and it Is constantly becoming of greater importance avei one hilf of the land area Is especially adapt able to forest growth with the soil possessing little or no fertility as ag rl cultural land the bulk of the forests belongs to private owners and the forest policy of the country has been essentially one of the economy of private the owners of these private forests are divided into two groups the farmers large and small and large corporations which operate on large scale forest methods the swedes were among the first to realize that some measure of restriction in the large private forest areas was necessary and among the first it not the first to actually apply remedies to and incidentally point the way tor other countries practically all the large lumber paper nd pulp corporations operate forest department of their own which work in close harmony with the royal con boards the government for cst sen ice and the colleges and schools from the forest experiment station at stockholm comes dr lars G romell to take the charles lathrop pack research professorship of forest soils just established at cornell versley the unusual character of ltv leals has been the principal conart button to sweden s progress pro gresa in forest management during the past two decades the most important point in alved in this legislation governing the care of the forests ls that the success tul promotion of forest management depends in the last analysis on the whole hearted support of the people and its universal application the principal feature of enforcement cm bodies the clement of securing cooperation primarily through education if the example of sweden which may ve be emulated by the united states presents the bright side of alie picture the experience of another na alon plainly shows the darker side and should be an object lesson to this country unless it gives the forestry problem serious consideration from a recent issue of alie congressional record Is taken these excerpts under the title of A plea for the forests from an address bv john Q tellson majority leader of the national house of who made an ex tended trip through clilia japan and korea last summer no one can visit china without having the maelo lesson 0 forest destruction borne in upon him in a most force tul manner china has pop in area it la one of the largest countree le in all the world it contains some ot the very large rivers ot the world china has comparatively an ex email mileage of railroads BO that its rivers should be relatively more important than those of any other country and yet what do we und the mouths ot all its rivers choked with sandbars up to about ten years ago large ships could not discharge at the docks ot shanghai at last the enormous commerce ot this great port forced its improvement but it was a huge and expensive undertaking ves pela ot any considerable draft cannot now reach at all but must stop outside of bar Is situated in a great alluvial plain which has been brought down from the region of peking and above by the hoi ho river all the bills and mountains in this region were denuded of their forests evidently many centuries ago no forests remain but that they were ac forest covered or at least are capable of producing trees Is shown by the sacred trees about the chinese temples and the tombs of their ancestors the rain now falls upon the barren slope and rapidly rushes to the sea carrying every particle of detached earth that tt can carry the sediment containing band and gravel Is deposited upon the fertile fields while the finer sediment Is carried into irrigation ditches the beds of streams and canals in korea the same mistake of denuding the hillsides hill sides has been made a in china with identical results so far as time has permitted doubtless Doubt lesa china bad been stripped of its tor centuries while korea was still a well wooded country but korea Is no longer well wooded having been denuded to its very mountain peaks while the same sad story Is being written of the barren mountains being washed down to fill up the precious irrigation ditches and to cover with worthless sand and silt the precious rice paddles and fertile wheat fields it Is worthy of note hat since japan took over korea a very ambitious and expensive program of reforestation has been entered upon and Is now being carried on there with every indication of a finally successful outcome but it will require many decades of time and an unlimited amount of money to und even in small part the great anju done to this unfortunate country b the reckless expenditure of its great forest wealth japan herself has done much better in this regard in her own little island empire the islands are evidently of comparatively recent geological forma alon so that there are many more high mountains with precipitous slopes and much of the land la steeply sloping hillsides hill sides from some of these the forests were stripped carelessly and ero slon hid begun its deadly work but has not been permitted to run its de course as in china and to a lesser degree in korea in fact in no other one thing are those who have directed the internal affairs of japan to be so much comment d as tor the masterly statesmanlike forestry policy that has been inaugurated and Is now being carried out in that country our own country Is old geologically but quite youthful in point of utilization of the land either for the timber originally standing on it or for agricultural purposes the time has not been sufficient in which to make all the mistakes of older countries but considering the brief period of our history we have surely made our share and the end Is not yet it is already apparent what the end will be we must not stumble blindly on into the condition of china and other portion of the orient or even to the state already reached by some parts of europe |