5H 
 

We Mnst Preserve Our Forests; Protect Our Watersheds, and 
 Promote the Utilities of Our Rivers From Source to Sea— 
 This Is the Plain Duty of tlie Hour, an.l if We Fail to 
 Do It, We Invite the Deluge and Create the Desert. 
 
 t.-^-'^o,^ 
 
 ^^ >^ SPEECH 
 
 OP 
 
 HON. WILLIAM SULZER 
 
 OF NEW YORK 
 
 IN TUB 
 
 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
 
 THURSDAY, MAY 21, 190S 
 
 41201— 7S09 
 
 WJVSHirsiGTorvt 
 
 1908 
 

 nj> 
 

 SPEECH 
 
 OF 
 
 II OX. WILLIAM SULZEE. 
 
 The House having under consideration the hill (H. R. 21986) to en- 
 able any State to cooperate with any other State or States, or with the 
 United States, for the conservation of the navigability of navigable 
 rivers, and to provide for the appointment of a commission — 
 
 Mr. SULZER said: 
 
 Mr. Speaker : Tliis bill to create a forest commission to 
 investigate something and report next year nothing regarding 
 the protection of the forests within the watersheds of the White 
 Monntains and the Southern Appalachian range is a sad disap- 
 pointment to the real friends of genuine forest preservation. It 
 means more delay — and procrastination has been the order of 
 the day — in this momentous matter. We had indulged the hope 
 that the Appalachian forest reservation bill would be reported 
 and passed before this session of Congress adjourned; but, alas, 
 our fondest expectations are again destined to be shattered by 
 this little apology for the real legislation so earnestly demanded 
 by the far-seeing people of the country. 
 
 Now, I want to say that I am opposed to this delay. I look 
 with suspicion ou this makeshift. Instead of the House of 
 Representatives responding to the appeals of the people and 
 meeting this great question in a broad and statesmanlike way, 
 the powers that be in this House direct that the commitee bring 
 in this bill to delegate away our legislative rights to a perfunc- 
 tory commission. It is a great mistake. The people are being 
 humbugged. The pretext will not answer. We are sent here 
 to legislate ou this question, and ou all other questions, and we 
 should not seek to escape the responsibility. The Congress is 
 the lawmaking body of this Government. The people elected 
 us to legislate, and if we are too indolent or too ignorant or too 
 incompetent to do it, we ought to be manly enough to say so and 
 44201—7809 3 
 
, 4: 
 
 resign and go home and let the people elect Members who are 
 capable enough and competent enough and industrious enough 
 to legislate, not only on this matter, but on all other matters. 
 
 I am opposed to delegating away the powers of the legislative 
 branch of the Government to irresponsible commissions. I am 
 against legislation by commission. I do not like too much 
 commission-made law. I am opposed to this legislative com- 
 mission business — to a commission to investigate the tariff 
 schedules, to a commission to report on banking and currency, 
 to a commission to look into this matter of forest preservation, 
 and to commissions to do various other things. It is all wrong. 
 It all means delay — more procrastination. These commissions 
 to do this, and to do that, and to do something or other, are 
 merely excuses for delay and for junketing parties, called into 
 being to have a good time, created to spend the people's money, 
 and nine times out of ten utterly useless and barren of benefi- 
 cial results. We are sent here to do the people's business. Let 
 us obej- their mandates and endeavor to meet their expecta- 
 tions. 
 
 I am in favor of preserving our forests bj- intelligent forestry 
 legislation. I am in favor of protecting our watersheds, and 
 utilizing to the utmost our numerous rivers as thes^ flow from 
 the mountains to the seas; and I believe tliat nov^' is as good a 
 time to begin as some time in the future. We must preserve 
 our forests ; we must protect our watersheds ; we must promote 
 the utilities of our rivers from source to sea. This is the plain 
 duty of the hour; and if we fail to do it, v\-e invite the deluge 
 and create the desert. This is a great economical question. I 
 warn the House that delay in this matter is dangerous. Let us 
 do our duty now and not endeavor to escape responsibility by 
 delegating our powers to this counnission that will be impotent 
 to accomplish permanent results. 
 
 Now, what does this little commission bill do? Briefly, it 
 provides, in the first section, that the consent of the United 
 States is given to any State to enter into any compact or 
 agreement, not in violation of the knv of the United States, 
 with any other State or States. The second section makes an 
 appropriation of $100,000 to enable the Secretary of Agricul- 
 44201—7800 
 
tnro to enter into cooperative arrangements witli tlio States or 
 witli owners of private woodlands for tlie administration and 
 utilization of tlie same. Just wliat the result of that will be 
 I linow not. The remaining sections of the bill provide for the 
 appointment of a commission of ten memboi-s, five to be ap- 
 pointed by the Speaker of the House and five to be appointed by 
 the presiding officer of the Senate; these ten to take into con- 
 sideration all questions relating to the proposed forest reserva- 
 tions of the White and Appalachian mountains. 
 \ The action of the committee in this matter— from the bill to 
 do something, now pending in the committee, to this commission 
 bill, just sprung on us, to do nothing— is the merest kind of a 
 makeshift— the rankest kind of an apology— intended only for 
 delay and to escape responsibility; and the whole proceeding is 
 most deplorable, I regret it exceedingly, and I appeal to the 
 wisdom and to the sagacity and to the patriotism of the Mem- 
 bers of Congress to do something substantial now before it is 
 too late. We are behind the age on this all-important question 
 of the conservation of our natural resources. We have received 
 a mighty heritage and with it a corresponding responsibility. 
 iWe are the trustees for future generations; and we will be 
 false to ourselves, false to our country, and false to our trust 
 if we do not do our duly and preserve, in so far as we can, 
 what we enjoy for the benefit of those that come after us. Let 
 us be true to our trust and true to the ages yet to come, and 
 always bear in mind that willful waste makes woeful want. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, we must preserve our forests ; we must protect 
 our watersheds; we must look after our rivers, fi'om their 
 source to the sea. It is one of the most important questions of 
 the day, and further delay is criminal. We must vrake up before 
 our forests are denuded and our rivers destroyed. After the 
 forests are gone this is what will happen : The soil dries up, 
 loses its fibrous life, and by erosion is rapidly washed down 
 into the rivers, whore it is deposited to the detriment of naviga- 
 tion, necessitating millions of dollars of Government money each 
 year for dredging. The heavier forest debris, which is not 
 removed, dries up and becomes a tangled mass of timber, that 
 takes fire from the hunter's or the woodman's match, or when 
 44201— 7S09 
 
 i 
 
6 
 
 the lightning strikes it. The fires, beginning in this debris, 
 spread to the forests that are left and every year do incalcula- 
 ble damage; then the springs and the multitude of tiny brooks 
 that feed the rivers are dried up, and the latter in the dry sea- 
 son get very low, causing enormous loss of the water power 
 which runs the great mills ; then the snows melt and the heavy 
 later rains begin. There is no soil now to hold back and dis- 
 tribute equably this downfall on the steep slopes, and so we 
 have the devastating floods, which annually entail enormous 
 losses. 
 
 And so, sir, it follows like the night the day that after the 
 devastation of the forests comes the deluge and then a barren 
 waste and then death to all living things and then the rainless 
 desert. It is thus that annihilation has come upon some of the 
 greatest empires and richest domains that the world has ever 
 seen. Once upon a time, before the mountain forests of Leb- 
 anon were destroyed, Palestine blossomed like a rose and sup- 
 ported in much affluence a population of 10,000,000. The moun- 
 tains have long been denuded. Forbidding slopes, barren and 
 ugly, rear their weird forms sharply above dismal and desolate 
 valleys. Scarcely •(100,000 people remain in all the region, and 
 most of these are in hopeless and abject poverty. 
 
 The valley of Babylon, where once stood the metropolis of 
 the world, is abandoned and forlorn. Nineveh, the magnificent 
 city of the ancients, is buried beneath the shifting sands of 
 time. Desert wastes cover the sites of Carthage and Tyre and 
 Sidon, yet bountiful nature once provided for these places its 
 richest gifts of fertility and abundance. Antioch is gone and 
 all Syria is a scene of irreparable ruin. The destruction of her 
 forests, followed by the disappearance of her soil and the de- 
 cay of her industries, foreshadowed the inevitable result. Man 
 destroyed the forests, and the lands which once flowed with 
 milk and honey were transformed into desert wastes. One- 
 third of China, it is said, has been rendered uninhabitable, and 
 the ruined hills of southern Italy will no longer support their 
 population, and testify in mute eloquence the consequence of 
 forest slaughter. Is such a mournful record of devastation and 
 destruction, of decay and annihilation, to be repeated in Amer- 
 
 44201— 7S09 
 
ica? I trust not. But I warn my fellow-countrymen that if 
 tlae carnival of loot of our natural resources is not stopped, and 
 speedily stopped, and the forests administered for perpetual use, 
 history will repeat itself, and the inevitable must follow here 
 as in other lands. We can not escape if we destroy principal 
 and interest. Let us do our duty now or sooner or later this 
 will be a national issue that will sweep all opposition aside. 
 
 The intelligent conservation of our wonderful natural re- 
 sources means much to our glorious country now, and much 
 more in lasting benefits to future generations. The willful 
 waste of these natural resources — the devastation of our for- 
 ests, the destruction of our watersheds, the elimination of our 
 rivers — means decaj- and death and desert wastes, means in the 
 centuries yet to come the conditions we now witness in north- 
 ern Africa, in western Asia, in Italy, and in Spain. The world 
 is' learning by experience. We must learn in the same school. 
 We can not have our cake and eat it, too. We can not violate 
 natural laws with impunity; we can not neglect fundamental 
 principles and escape the consequences; we can not decimate 
 our forests and have our rivers, too, and without them our 
 fertile fields will ere long be barren wastes. Shall the history 
 of the ancients repeat itself here? Shall we never take heed? 
 In the story of the past let us realize the dutj' of the present, and 
 by intelligently responding to the essential demands of the hour 
 we will be true to our trust, true to humanity, true to ourselves, 
 and future generations appreciating our work will rise up and 
 call us blessed. [Applause.] 
 
 The SPEAKER. The time of the gentleman from New York 
 has expired. 
 
 44201— 7S09 
 
 o 
 
 i 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 DDDDfi^7fib33