Vol. XVII-No. 11

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EDITORIAL.

ND FOREST FIRES, is, or should be, the State-wide slogan. The season is upon us. It's no longer a question of extinguishing or suppressing these disgraceful fires. The call for every citizen of the State is to end them. We have dallied along with insufficient funds in the idea of making them less frequent and less severe each year. The one idea now is to end them. They are burning up our resources. They are diminishing the water power of the State. They are making our life harder than ever before. They are placing a burden, a hindrance upon every growing boy and girl, because they make the price of all wood products higher each year, because these products are scarcer, the demand for them is greater, and an increasing population must have them, for there is no substitute for them. The Governor of the State, in eloquent, forceful terms, has set apart a whole week for the citizens to keep forest fires in mind, to prepare for preventing them and if they do come in spite of all that we can do to prevent them, then to stop them with the least possible delay. Probably one-fifth of the woodland area of Pennsylvania is more or less fire-scarred each year. In Germany the annual forest burnings are about one-tenth of one per cent. of the woodland area. They give their attention there to making forest fires impossible. The extent of our attention, is to lament their coming, and if the fire warden summons us, the service rendered is, too often, an unwilling one.

Let it be understood, there is no excuse for forest fires started by human agency. No man has a right to start one and allow it to escape. If there was any danger in starting it, he had no right to take the chance, and if he did take it he should be ferreted out and take the consequences. Rarely, but very rarely, a forest fire originates from lightning, and such an one is the only kind of fire for which there is no one to punish. In an experience of fifty years I have seen but two forest fires that I could charge to lightning.

This has been an unusual growing season. The volume of foliage formed is greatly in excess of

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the average. These leaves are falling or down now, dead. Two or three days of bright, warm sunshine will dry them, and the forest floor will be as inflammable as a haymow. Yet thousands who would never drop an unextinguished match into the hay will, without thought, drop one into the leaves. It would be a great step taken to allow no one to go into the woods until he had satisfied some competent judge that he was fully aware of the forest fire hazard and intended to regard it. It would be a greater protection still if every court in the State recognized the fact that every forest fire is a disaster to the State and that there is probably some one who ought to be punished for it.

Within the lifetime of men still living the man who started a forest fire had the benefit of every possible doubt. If convicted he usually had the sympathy of the community unless that fire invaded a lumber job. Yet it might well be that the damage done to the lumber was the least part of the damage done to the State. Cases have been brought into court in Pennsylvania where the reluctance of the judge to have them tried caused the suit to be dropped, yet those very cases were backed by reliable witnesses.

Never before has there been such a mustering of public sentiment against forest fires as this autumn. The Governor of the State has personally sounded the alarm. The railroads are backing the crusade. Lumber, commercial forestry organizations, professional men, have pooled their interests in one great committee to work for the restoration of timber on our barren lands. The first move that this committee made was to organize into a permanent body, pledged to work now might and main to free the State from the curse of forest fires which destroy the timber, young and old, and burn the best part of the soil.

The quality of citizenship exhibited by any able-bodied man who will stand by and see the fire licking up the future forests of the State may well be called in question.

When the fire hazard is so reduced in Pennsylvania that there is a reasonable chance that young timber planted will escape fire and be allowed to grow to merchantable size, then, and not

Buffalo and Susquehanna Railroad Corporation, D. L. & W. Railroad Company, Rockhill Coal and Iron Company, Lehigh & New England Railroad Company, Pennsylvania Railroad, Philadel

It is strictly within the truth to say that the rapid increase of impoverished soil is one of actual peril to this Commonwealth. One may now go mile after mile over areas that were rich in timber but upon which nothing of value is now growing. The one and only cause of this desolation is the repeated burnings which not only destroy the young growth but destroyed the soil as well.

Of course, the Pennsylvania Forestry Association is enlisted in the crusade to end forest fires as evidenced by the following:

Resolved, That the Pennsylvania Forestry Association should and will give hearty support to the Governor of Pennsylvania and to the Department of Forestry in urging upon the Legislature convening in 1921 the urgent necessity in the interest of the State of larger appropriations to be applied to the protection of our forests from fires, the encouragement and support of the growth of new wood, and the acquisition and planting of large areas of land in our State fit for tree growth and not suitable for agriculture. Resolved, That the members of the Association throughout the State be urged to bring this matter to the attention of prospective members of the next Legislature and to all others interested.

The following organizations have thus far endorsed the campaign, while other endorsements will come when annual meetings are held:

American Legion, State Federation of Pennsylvania Women, State Chamber of Commerce, State Federation of Labor, Pennsylvania State Grange, - Pennsylvania Forestry Association, Lumber Dealers' Association, Y. M. C. A., Knights of Columbus, P. O. S. of A., State Editorial Association, State Sportmen's Association, Pennsylvania Medical Society, Lehigh Portland Cement Company, Harbison-Walker Refractories Company, Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company, American Lime and Stone Company, Central Pennsylvania Lumber Company, Madeira-Hill Company, National Paper Box Manufacturers' Association,

Railroad Company, Pittsburgh Wholesale Lumber Dealers' Association, Rotary Clubs, Delaware & Hudson Railroad, Anthracite Protective Association, Pocono Forestry Association.

The following statement shows very conclusively what the wish of the Governor is: "The Forestry Department should have for fire protection more money than it now has for all purposes.'

There never has been such a concerted, powerfully backed determination to wipe out the blight of forest fires upon the prosperity of the State

as now.

Least of all organizations can the Pennsylvania Forestry Association lag behind in this work. It is up to us, individually, to see that the members of the next Legislature are fully informed as to our wishes, and that we anticipate their active co-operation in providing ample funds to end forest fires. They can only properly represent us when they know what we want. Tell them plainly. J. T. Rothrock.

Resolutions of the Medical Society.

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HE following resolutions were unanimously adopted by the Medical Society of the State of Pennsylvania, at its Pittsburgh meeting, October 4th to 7th:

WHEREAS, Abundance of pure water is an absolute necessity for public health; and

WHEREAS, Our timberless, unproductive, abandoned highlands of the State are a nursery of floods which transport germs of disease through the breadth of the Commonwealth, and by such floods, disturb the even flow of water which is so necessary for a production of water power; and

WHEREAS, There are in Pennsylvania today five million acres of such timberless areas which are a menace to individual health and to public prosperity, which lands once produced a crop of timber of immense value to the State, and which, under State control, can be restored to a productive condition; therefore, be it

Resolved, The Medical Society of the State of Pennsylvania cordially approves of the wish of His Excellency, the Honorable William C. Sproul, Governor of the Commonwealth, that these acres be taken under control of the Pennsylvania Forest Commission by purchase, that further im