profits by careful cutting, always leaving young trees to grow for future use. It is difficult to make an American see any other way than the way that gets the largest number of dollars to-day. Our education has all been in that direction. The get-rich-quick method is much in vogue with nearly all of us. Yet with all this, we are not truly wise unless we take note of and learn from the experience of the peoples of other and older countries. If in this respect we would study the history of northern China, France and Spain on the one hand, and the history of Germany and Switzerland on the other, every thoughtful person would be in favor of the State acquiring immediately every acre of forests in the sixteen reserve forest counties useful for preservation as forests and on account of the State's water supply. Why should we not? Canals and good roads are necessary and important, yet it is very doubtful whether either of them or both of them in the long run are as important to the people of the State as are our forests. If the choice had to be made and we had to do absolutely without one or the other, the canals or the forests, I have no hesitancy in saying that we could much better do without the canals than we could without the forests. Yet we are expending very little money on the one that is perishable and going very fast beyond recovery, and very much money on the other which is not perishable and could be built at any time. Is this wise? Is it a far-sighted policy? It must be remembered that in much of the forested area left, when the trees are gone the soil will go, and on such sterile land reforestation cannot take place naturally, nor can it be artificially reforested. We could build a canal most any time, but we cannot replace the lost soil. This State should by constitutional amendment, if necessary, provide money enough to acquire nearly all of the forest land left. That would be using good judgment. I can only give the warning, state the facts, and sincerely hope the warning will be heeded.

The next important thing that should be taken up, considered and acted on is, how can we improve the method of handling the forests we have and those to be acquired? In considering and dealing with that subject, we should divest ourselves of all sentimental, purely aesthetic and selfish notions, and consider and solve the question in a practical business way. If we want the property only to obtain and own some forest land, to pay taxes on it, to spend a large amount of money in trying to protect the

property from fire and trespass, to have a large number of acres to surround the holdings of the few, to inconvenience other owners who want to work their holdings and cannot because they cannot get in or out across State land, to make it impossible for many small owners in that country to conveniently get firewood without committing trespass, to prevent to a large extent the utilization of much of the very valuable water horsepower, to prevent the destruction of good roads through this wonderful, beautiful country that it may be conveniently visited, toured through and made the finest and most accessible Nature's beauty spot in the world where a million people would visit instead of a few hundred thousand annually, then we are all right in our present policy and all we need to do is to strictly enforce the Constitution.

If, on the other hand, we want that which we have and that which we may hereafter acquire for a forest preserve in its truest sense; if we want it that we may use it as a recreation place for many, a place where the rich, the well-to-do and the poor can go and enjoy the blessings so abundantly offered by Nature; if we want it that we may not only enjoy these blessings, but that we may by and through the care of the State to some extent at least utilize the water horsepower for legitimate purposes, deriving therefrom a perpetual annual revenue; if we want it to really be a paradise for the many, accessible, beautiful, unrivalled; if we desire to use it so a poor man with a sick wife or baby may under authority of the State build a little camp 'neath a tree where the birds sing, and not be a trespasser, where he may see the sick wife or child cured and restored to health by the terebinthine odors from the spruce and pine and balsam; if we desire to have the best opportunity to protect it from fire and that the State itself may remove dead and fallen trees and utilize them and prevent waste; if, in fact, we want to handle it and use it for the best interests of all, in a scientific, wholesome, practical, sane, serviceable way, and all the time make it better, then we must change the Constitution in a few respects.

Personally I would rather it would remain as it is forever, the State suffering a large annual loss, than to take any reasonable chance of a change of the Constitution that would be harmful. All of my views in relation to it are expressed with that deep-seated feeling. Yet from much study

of the whole situation, all its features, its needs, I am confident that a change permitting all of these necessary things can be safely made and nothing but good come from it.

In my opinion there should be authority given to the Highway Commission to build a simple good-road system through our forests. The State itself should have the power to utilize the water power where it could be done and no injury accrue. This Commission should have the right to lease small camp sites and obtain a large revenue for the State therefrom, thereby giving an opportunity for many to go to the woods and live cheaply who cannot now afford to go at all. This Commission should have the right to remove down and dead timber and utilize it, obtaining a revenue and bettering the conditions as to fire protection. There is enough dead and down timber in the Adirondacks to supply all New York with wood for years; as it is, it constitutes a deadly menace, through threat of fire, to all the standing green timber and the entire forest. This Commission should have the right to dispose of outlying, detached parcels of land and with the proceeds or its equivalent acquire land within the blue line.

These are some of the things that plainly should be done, and mere sentiment and impractical things should not stand in the way of it. I offer for consideration the following form of a constitutional amendment:

Proposed amendment to article VII, section 7, of the Constitution of the State of New York:

Except as is in this section hereinafter provided the lands of the State, now owned or hereinafter acquired, constituting the forest preserve as now fixed by law, shall be forever kept as wild forest lands, [they] and shall not be leased, sold or exchanged, or be taken by any corporation, public or private, nor shall the timber thereon be sold, removed or destroyed. Upon first obtaining the approval of the Governor, the State Water Supply Commission may erect and maintain dams upon said lands for impounding water and other purposes, and flow with such water not to exceed acres of such land in the aggregate; providing that the dams so erected and maintained and the waters so impounded and all lands so flowed shall be forever owned, managed and controlled by the State. Such of the lands as are