Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting: Washington D.C. September 26, 27 and 28 1923
Science
Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting: Washington D.C. September 26, 27 and 28 1923
Northern Nut Growers Association -- Periodicals; Nut trees -- Periodicals; Nuts -- Periodicals
As a delegate to the National Tax Association convention at White
Sulphur Springs, it has been my lot to have been named on both federal
and state committees, with the idea of exempting from taxation those who
would produce trees for the future. My experience has been that
exemption from taxation for the purpose of producing our future forests
is a wrong one. The sentiment of the people is against exemption from
taxation, and I do not know how it may be practically applied to the
growing of the forests that our country must have in the future. But the
individual will not carry out the work, and the corporations will not
undertake it, so it devolves upon the government of the state to
reproduce those forests. The government lives for a long period in
between many life-times, and ours should live as long as the earth. It
is therefore up to us to reproduce those forests which we once had and,
as all things come back to the state, then the state should reforest.
Next the roadways are to be considered. Roadways will grow a better
class of timber and trees; they are rich in soil, generally, because
they pass through the most fertile regions of the country and, up to
this time, they have been waste land. I believe that the farmer is right
in his wish that trees which shut in the roadsides should be cut away,
that the sunlight should be let in and the roads hard-surfaced. We saw
in our trip that where the trees shaded the roads they were almost
impassable at times, while in the open places, they were fine.
In Michigan we took up the question of roadside planting, and Senator
Penny fathered the bill, the pioneer measure, that caused our state to
plant roadways. We have a very competent landscape engineer in charge of
one of the departments, and he is planning to grow roadside trees, using
nut-bearing trees, so that the next generation will profit largely by
the work of today. And this is just because of this association.
When I was honored with your presidency, one of the features of the work
we carried on was in getting nut trees from historic places, especially
from Mt. Vernon. The Superintendent of Mt. Vernon very kindly told us
that we could have the walnut crop from trees that were started there
during Washington's time, and the only stipulation was that we should
not commercialize the idea; that those nuts were priceless, and that we
should not receive any money for them, but should distribute them in the
schools and in a public way cause interest in the planting of nut trees.
That very movement brought about wonderful results, and today there are
from five to ten thousand walnut trees growing in our state, about the
height of a man, all of them having come from Mt. Vernon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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