te for the wooden railroad tie has been devised;
and our whole system of land transportation is directly dependent for
its existence upon the forest, which supplies more than one hundred and
twenty million new railroad ties every year in the United States alone.

The forest regulates and protects the flow of streams. Its effect is to
reduce the height of floods and to moderate extremes of low water. The
official measurements of the United States Geological Survey have
finally settled this long-disputed question. By protecting mountain
slopes against excessive soil wash, it protects also the lowlands upon
which this wash would otherwise be deposited and the rivers whose
channels it would clog. It is well within the truth to say that the
utility of any system of rivers for transportation, for irrigation, for
waterpower, and for domestic supply depends in great part upon the
protection which forests offer to the headwaters of the streams, and
that without such protection none of these uses can be expected long to
endure.

Of the two basic materials of our civilization, iron and wood, the
forest supplies one. The dominant place of the forest in our national
economy is well illustrated by the fact that no article whatsoever,
whether of use or ornament, whether it be for food, shelter, clothing,
convenience, protection, or decoration, can be produced and delivered to
the user, as industry is now organized, without the help of the forest
in supplying wood. An examination of the history of any article,
including the production of the raw material, and its manufacture,
transportation, and distribution, will at once make this point clear.

The forest is a national necessity. Without the material, the
protection, and the assistance it supplies, no nation can long succeed.
Many regions of the old world, such as Palestine, Greece, Northern
Africa, and Central India, offer in themselves the most impressive
object lessons of the effect upon national prosperity and national
character of the neglect of the forest and its consequent destruction.

THE FORESTER'S POINT OF VIEW

The central idea of the Forester, in handling the forest, is to promote
and perpetuate its greatest use to men. His purpose is to make it serve
the greatest good of the greatest number for the longest time. Before
the members of any other profession dealing with natural resources, the
Foresters acquired the long look ahead. This was only natural, because