and to perpetuate their business they must have new ones coming on. Self-interest, more potent than philanthropy, demands abandonment of the wasteful methods prevalent in the past history of their industry.

With this new point of view, the Northwestern lumberman, far from being an element requiring regulation by the public in the interest of forest preservation, has become the leader in reform. It has been chiefly through his aggressive campaigning that state laws have been improved, bearing as rigidly on the careless member of his own brotherhood as upon anyone else. He gives his financial support to educational work directed at both lumbermen and public. He hires professional foresters to help him try such better management as conditions will permit. But particularly, through coöperative associations, he has taken the lead in fire prevention. And admitting his motive to be largely selfish, the benefit to the consumer is none the less. To the man who needs lumber, to keep it from burning up is conservation that counts.

After so much preamble you may wonder what we have actually to report; what we can offer in the way of results. Here are some of them: Last year was one of the worst for forest fires in American history. Loss of life and property was terrific. But the private protective systems allied with the Western Forestry and Conservation Association carried safely through the season fully 16,000,000 acres of forest, containing at least the stupendous amount of 300 billion feet of timber. They kept the loss of private timber in Idaho, Washington and Oregon, the three states hardest hit, down to one-fourth of one per cent. How did they do this? By raising and spending $700,000 for patrol and fire fighting, and actually extinguishing 5,580 fires.

It was a telegram from the president of the Western Forestry and Conservation Association, with the standing of our work behind it, that caused the ordering out of the United States Army to assist the undermanned forest service on the national forests.

This year's records are not compiled, but will be quite as interesting. Through their alliance the associations turned to account every lesson each learned in 1910, and spread increased patrols equipped with new advantages of perfected organization, telephone and trail systems, supply storage, and automobile and motorcycles where these could be used. Organization permitted close and systematic coöperation with state and federal forces. Every association ranger served as a police officer and one Washington association alone got over thirty convictions. Offending lumbermen were made the first examples. Hundreds of fires were extinguished but not one was allowed to become serious in 1911.

Our association serves as the one and only common meeting ground for all agencies for forest protection, including state and federal as well as private fire officials, and employs a trained forester to collect and disseminate for all information that will assist in solving problems of reforestation, legislation, education and like matters demanding expert

knowledge or central facilities. It thus had the chief responsibility for forest legislation in several Western states last winter and did more than had been done in all preceding Legislatures.

It has published the first comprehensive book on reforestation and forest management in the West ever issued, now used as a text-book by the Forest Service and forestry schools.

It furnishes all newspapers in the Northwest with regular bulletins throughout the fire season, not only giving reliable news but keeping the necessity and method of precautionary measures before the public.

It issues hundreds of thousands of fire circulars and stickers, with a highly perfected system for putting them where they will count. This year, with the aid of state authorities, it put an illustrated folder with simple questions and answers on forest protection in the hands of every school child in the Pacific Northwest, an enterprise requiring the printing and complicated distribution of thousands of pounds of material.

It furnishes state officials and others with practically all the mottoes and catchy material used for posters and other publicity matter in the West. It has even placed this kind of thing in the time folders of every railroad traversing our forest regions.

I cannot take your time to recite the many other activities of our coöperative movement, but these will indicate its scope and method. The Northwestern timber owner is doing his part to protect your resources that he holds in trust. If Congress, state and public will do as much, you have little to fear.

Chairman VESSEY-I now take pleasure in introducing Mr. Ferdinand G. Schwedtman of St. Louis, chairman of the delegation of manufacturers of the U. S. A. I have the honor to present him to you.

[Mr. Schwedtman's paper is to be found in Supplementary Proceedings.]

Chairman VESSEY-The next speaker is William Edward Coffin of New York, vice-president of the Camp Fire Club of America.

[Mr. Coffin's paper is in Supplementary Proceedings.]

Chairman VESSEY-I wish to introduce Dr. George W. Field, repre senting the National Audubon Society.

[Dr. Field's paper will be found in Supplementary Proceedings.] Chairman VESSEY-IS Mr. McBrien, representing the National Educational Association, here?

Is Mr. Edward R. Taylor, representative of the Electrochemical Society, here?

Mr. TAYLOR-It is my pleasure to represent the American Electrochemical Society. There are ten thousand chemists in the United States. They are largely concerned in the working out of economic problems

and the best utilization of all substances capable of adding to our material prosperity. Many of these chemists are members of the American Chemical Society, the American Electrochemical Society, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and the Society of Chemical Industry, all of which societies are deeply interested in the best conservation of our natural resources and are in full sympathy with the objects of this Congress.

Chairman VESSEY-We will next hear the president of the Iowa Federation of Women's Clubs. Is Mrs. M. H. Weller present? Those who have papers that will take five or ten minutes to read can just speak on a short synopsis of their papers, and have the papers filed. They will be able to say more, so that the people will understand it better than if they only read part of the paper.

Mrs. Weller was not present.

Chairman VESSEY-Is Mrs. Carl Vrooman, representing the D. A. R., here?

I am very much pleased to present her to you. (Applause) Mrs. VROOMAN-Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: I feel weighted with a heavy weight of responsibility, as I am here to represent 77,000 Daughters of the American Revolution in general, but the chairman of the conservation committee of this organization in particular—a woman who has, I venture to say, done more for the cause of conservation than any other woman of our day-I was about to say than almost any man-since she is the very proud mother of Mr. Gifford

Pinchot.

This society of women, "federated and organized"-to quote Mr. Pinchot, "spells only another name for the highest form of conservation, that of vital force and intellectual energy." These 77,000 women do indeed represent a perfect Niagara of splendid ability and force-enough, if intelligently harnessed and directed, to furnish the motive power to keep revolving all the wheels of progress in this country.

But to revert from what we might do and ought to do in general, to what we have done and intend to do in particular, for conservation, a remark made by the Right Honorable John Burns of England, concerning the American people, might apply perhaps with equal force to our two-year-old conservation committee: "The American people," said Mr. Burns, "is a very young colt in a very large field."

The very able first chairman of this committee, Mrs. Amos Draper, inaugurated and carried on during the first year a most energetic campaign, a report of which you had submitted at the last Conservation Congress in St. Paul. The next year, however, illness compelled her resignation, when Mrs. Orton, of Cleveland, O., whose work in behalf of children is well known, took the chairmanship for the ensuing six

months, during which time the committee concentrated its chief energies in efforts to help secure legislation for the protection and conservation of that greatest asset the Nation has-its children.

Now that we are standing well on our feet, a committee with Mrs. Pinchot at our head, with over one hundred women on the National Committee, representing each state, and a state chairman for every state, with every chapter represented on the state conservation committee, we hope we have the country well honeycombed with women who will take an active and intelligent interest in conservation. And aided and abetted by the National Conservation Association, which has promised to furnish us with all the ammunition we need, we intend to carry on an aggressive warfare, or, to speak less militantly, an active campaign of education. For we feel, in the words of our President General, that women today—even without any articulate voice in the councils of state-without the vote that so many are striving for, and think is essential—women today, when thoroughly aroused and awake to their present unquestioned opportunities and responsibilities, as well as to their problematical rights, can wield an incalculable influence, and become most potent and resistless factors for good in helping create a healthy public sentiment-in stimulating to higher activity that organ of the body politic (so often prone to paralysis) known as the civic conscience.

But since education, like charity, should begin at home, we intend, first of all, to educate ourselves. And, for this purpose, a number of our members have come from different parts of the country to attend this Congress and learn all we can about this problem of conservation.

We are glad to know that an officer of this association has written such a capital book on conservation, and we shall make it a point to advertise Mr. Price's book, "The Land We Live In," among the women of the country.

We hope soon to have a department on current conservation news in our D. A. R. Magazine, giving every month items of conservation interest, which can be supplied later to the local papers.

We expect also to have something to say about the importance of teaching conservation in the public schools-not necessarily as a part of the curriculum, for children are fairly swamped these days with a surfeit of extra studies-but we do feel that conservation as opposed to wastefulness everywhere (especially in the form of domestic economy) should be emphasized and inculcated as are other virtues-such as truth, patriotism, obedience.

Conservation in the kitchen is one of the most important problems in American life, and I believe I am safe in saying that that modern knight errant, Dr. Wiley, and his board of conservation of human health by means of pure food, has the enthusiastic and whole-hearted support of every one of our 77,000 daughters to a unit.

I should like to say in passing that another man we are behind— heart and soul in his fearless fight with the beast in our modern jungle

-is that man who has made it his business and his mission to reclaim not waste lands, but waste lives-that great-hearted champion of the children, and of the people-Judge Ben Lindsey, first citizen of Denver and one of the first citizens of the United States.

I am aware that this is far from being an orthodox report, as it is more prospective than retrospective, and deals rather with what we intend to do than what we have already done, but we are drinking in so muck inspiration here, and getting so many new ideas, that next year you may expect from us a bona fide report, fairly bristling with businesslike facts. and statistics.

May I say just one more word? In addition to this definite program of tangible things we want to carry out, we pledge you something else, which, although it cannot be weighed and measured and appraised at its face value, after all may be as worth while as the sum total of what we actually achieve in a concrete way, and that is our unswerving loyalty to the spirit of what this association stands for-to put it rather pompously—our moral backing and support in this business you have undertaken to help conserve the best interests of our country-a business in which we have no intention of being altogether "silent partners," although we are women!

We may not, it is true, formulate any new policies for you, or launch any issues, or make any very original contributions to your program, but there is one thing women can bring into a movement of this kind, and that is to use a very much overworked word-"atmosphere." Even if women don't dig down into the earth-even if we daughters don't actually dig down into the earth, like you horny-handed sons of toilwomen may yet bring with them, when they put their hearts, as well as their hands, into a thing, an atmosphere that, like the air and sunshine, is absolutely indispensable to a good crop, to a bountiful harvest, an atmosphere that makes ideas sprout and grow, and ideals expand and develop and take deeper root in the subsoil of the masculine mind!

So, then, we bring today to this Congress our heartfelt sympathy with its ideals a sympathy that is born of a certain intuitive perception. we have-not by any means of all the intricate problems involved in this question of conservation-but a perception of the principles which are at stake, and we promise you our whole-hearted allegiance to those principles, as well as our contagious enthusiasm, in this splendid crusade, to conserve not only the vast natural resources of this country, on which depends our national prosperity, but those ideals of public as well as of private morality, which we realize we must sacrifice for, and defend and conserve and make to prevail, if, in the words of the Athenians, which might well be the motto of the Apostles of American Conservation, "we would transmit our fatherland not only not less but better and greater than it was transmitted to us."

Delegate BAUMGARTNER of California-I want to extend a vote of