Few things have been more typical of our people and have been more full of promise for the future than the way in which the resources have been developed; and when one sees what has been done here during the last few years I think we have cause to feel abundantly justified in our belief that the qualities of the old-time pioneers who first penetrated the woody wilderness between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi, who then steered their way across vast seas of grass from the Mississippi to the Rockies, who penetrated the passes of the great barren mountains until they came to this, the greatest of all the oceans, still survive in their grandsons and successors. Nor must we forget in speaking of Alaska the immense importance that the Territory has from the standpoint of the needs of the Nation as a whole, as a dominant power in the Pacific. Exactly as with the building of the Isthmian Canal we shall make our Atlantic and our Pacific coasts in effect continuous, so the possession and peopling of the Alaskan seacoast puts us in a position of dominance as regards the Pacific which no other nations share or can share. FROM ADDRESS AT EVERETT, WASH., MAY 23, 1903 There are few problems which so especially concern Washington, Oregon, and California as the problem of forestry. Nothing has been of better augury for the welfare and prosperity of these great States as well as for the other forest States than the way in which those actively engaged in the lumbering business have come of recent years to work hand in hand with those who have made forestry a study in the effort to preserve the forests. The whole question is a business, an economic question; an economic question for the Nation, a business question for the individual. East of your great mountain chains the question of water supply becomes vital and becomes inseparable from that of forestry. Here that question does not enter in. The lumbering interest is the fourth great business interest in point of importance in the United States. There is engaged in it a capital of over six hundred millions of dollars, and every year the wage-workers in that industry receive one hundred millions of dollars. Such an industry so vitally connected with many others in the country can not with wisdom be neglected, the interests depending upon it are too vast. I do not have to say here in Washington that fire is a great enemy of the forests. Here in Washington it is probable that fire has destroyed more than the axe during the decade in which the axe has been at work.