Jasper County Democrat, Volume 6, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 June 1903 — CURRENT COMMENT [ARTICLE]

CURRENT COMMENT

Forest and Flood. The recent floods in Kansas damaged property in the twenty-five principal cities of the State aud in Kansas City, Mo., to the amount of $12,300,000. The losses in the 200 smaller towns in the tone of the floods will probably increase this to $15,000,000. The losses in Nebraska are scheduled at $10,000,000. The losses in Missouri, iucluding St. Louis, will probably reach $20,000,000, and the losses to farmers and others in Illinois and other States along the river will increase the total to $50,000,000. The losses by the flood in the Ohio valley a few weeks ago were estimated at $50,000,000. The losses along some of the smaller Pennsylvania rivers in Pennsylvania amounted to $1,000,000. The storms in South Carolina on Saturday destroyed $3,500,000 worth of property. At a low estimate, the floods of this spriag have entailed a loss to producers and business interests and private property in the United States of $120,000,000. This is not an exceptional record. Every two or three years the floods are as disastrous to life and property interests as they have been this year. It is believed that one-half of this loss might be prevented by the reforestation of lands on the water sheds of the great rivers and by tree planting on the plains of Kansas and Nebraska. Experiments In New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois. Minnesota aud other States show that trea may be grown at a profit. A liberal estimate places the first expense of planting trees at $l4O an acre. In one case in Illinois the preparation for planting, the plsnting, and the care of ten acres of trees for ten years was S2OO. At the experiment station at the Illinois University seven acrea were planted with 36,749 trees, at a cost of $433 for trees, $lO6 for planting, and $43 for cultivation, or a total of $382, or SB3 an acre. It is contended by the Minnesota forestry department that crop of trees can be grown as surely as a crop of corn, and, in proportion to its value, with far less expense; that ten acres properly planted with timber and properly cultivated will in five years supply fuel for a family and fencing for a farm of 160 acres; that the most worthless lands of treeless regions, when planted in trees, can be sold for SIOO per acre within twenty years; that the net profits on a quarter section of prairie, properly prepared, planted, and cultivated with forest trees, will within ten years exceed the net profits of ten quarter sections of wheat. Taking the first cost, however, of tree planting, the 5,000,000 trees planted in •this country every year involve an expenditure of not more than $250,000. If the number of trees planted annually were increased one hundred fold, the cost would be $25,000,000, and if we planted 600,000,000 trees a year vie could have in twenty-five years such a measure of reforestation as would produce the conditions that prevailed when the water sheds of our great rivers were covered with forest*. THs would be a moderate outlay, even if thgre were no profit iu tree planting, but the experiments of railway managers and of farmers prove that tree planting as a business is profitable. Therefore it is not easy to understand why the farmers of the country, the railway managers, the manufacturers, and business men generally, do not unite in a common movement to recure practical safety from disastrous floods at an annual expenditure of money not one-fourth as large as the annual loss by floods. —Chicago Inter Ocean.