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Updated: May 13, 2025
But on a street, where the repression of pavements and sidewalks interferes with this exuberance, the balsam poplar is well worth planting. The poplars as a family are pushing and energetic growers, and serve a great purpose in the reforestation of American acres that have been carelessly denuded of their tree cover.
Some of these lands still are yielding fair crops of timber due to natural restocking and proper care. Most of them are indifferent producers. One-quarter of all this land is bare of forest growth. It is our duty as citizens of the United States to aid as we may in the reforestation of this area. Fires are cutting down the size of our forests each year.
No expenditure of public money contributes so much to the national wealth as for building good roads. Reforestation has an importance far above the attention it usually secures. A special committee of the Senate is investigating this need, and I shall welcome a constructive policy based on their report. It is 100 years since our country announced the Monroe doctrine.
The scientific practice of forestry, the maintenance of an efficient fire patrol, and the reforestation of denuded areas that can best be utilized for the growth of timber, must be undertaken or supervised by government experts. The very limited supplies of coal, oil, and natural gas must be protected from waste. Outlook, vol. 93, p. 770. Atlantic Monthly, vol. 101, p. 694.
The work itself will cover a wide field including clearance of slums, which for adequate reasons cannot be undertaken by private capital; in rural housing of several kinds, where, again, private capital is unable to function; in rural electrification; in the reforestation of the great watersheds of the Nation; in an intensified program to prevent soil erosion and to reclaim blighted areas; in improving existing road systems and in constructing national highways designed to handle modern traffic; in the elimination of grade crossings; in the extension and enlargement of the successful work of the Civilian Conservation Corps; in non-Federal works, mostly self-liquidating and highly useful to local divisions of Government; and on many other projects which the Nation needs and cannot afford to neglect.
German forests are now said to be worth more than $5,000,000,000. France has over 2,750,000 acres of fine publicly owned forests, in addition to private forests, which yield a net income of more than $2 an acre a year to the government. The French have led in extending reforestation on denuded mountain sides. British India has well-managed forests which cover over 200,000 square miles of area.
The established general policy of these projects should not be abandoned for any private control. Highways and reforestation should continue to have the interest and support of the Government. Everyone is anxious for good highways. I have made a liberal proposal in the Budget for the continuing payment to the States by the Federal Government of its share for this necessary public improvement.
In order to develop the resources of the country and to transform its present poverty into prosperity, Italy has already inaugurated an extensive scheme of public works, which includes the reclamation of the marshes, the reforestation of the mountains, the reconstruction of the highways, the improvement of the ports, and the construction of a railway straight across Albania, from the coast at Durazzo to Monastir, in Serbian Macedonia, where it will connect with the line from Belgrade to Salonika.
But in most cases the association of forest owners to this end has led also to progress in many other matters inseparable from improvement, such as study of reforestation possibilities, forest legislation, educating lumberman and public in forest preservation, and the extension of coöperation in all these as well as in fire prevention from private to State and federal agencies.
Eleven States are receiving assistance from the Federal Government under the Weeks law, which authorizes coöperation for fire protection, provided the State will furnish a sum equal to that allotted to it from the National fund, with a limit of ten thousand dollars to a single State. For purposes of reforestation, ten States maintain forest nurseries.
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