_Forests and Stream Flow._ But the forests not only supply us with wood. For other reasons they deserve governmental consideration. The forests in the mountains control our streams, vitally affect the industries depending upon water power, reduce the severity of floods and erosion, and in this way are intimately wrapped up with our great agricultural interests. For this reason forestry is by nature less suited for private enterprise. In agriculture and horticulture the influence of the farm or the fruit crop rarely extends beyond the owner's fence. What I plant in my field does not affect my neighbors; they share neither in my success or failure. If by the use of poor methods I ruin the fertility of my farm, this fact does not influence the fertility of my neighbor's fields. But in forestry it is different. Unfortunately, just as the sins of the fathers are visited upon their children, so the sins of the mountains are visited upon the valleys. [Illustration: Map showing the National Forest areas in the West, the location of the proposed National Forests in the East, and the area which the present National Forests would occupy if they were all consolidated into one body in some of the well-known Eastern States.] The mountainous slopes of the Appalachian ranges and the steep, broken, granite ridges of the Rockies, the Sierras, and the Cascades are the sites most suited in our country for forestry purposes. The Appalachian ranges have been affected most by the reckless cutting of forests. When these mountains were clothed with forests, the rivers ran bank full, ships came to the harbors at low tide with ease, and factories and cotton-mills ran steadily all year long. Since the destruction of these forests the surrounding country has suffered from alternate floods and droughts; great manufacturing centers have lost their steady supply of water; harbors are filled with silt from the mountain sides; and fields, once fertile, are covered with sand, gravel, and débris, deposited by the ungovernable stream. These forests belonged to private individuals who disposed of the timber and pocketed all the profits, while the community below suffered all the loss. In other words, private ownership is inadequate since private interest and private responsibility are not sufficiently far-reaching and far-sighted.