Fact and legend have been combined to give many of us a somewhat mystical story of our early forest wealth. Authentic records there are, of course, which enable us to picture a little to our satisfaction how these forests appeared to the voyager from across the Atlantic, but even some of these smack more of 17th century press agent tactics fostered by an ambitious trading company, than a sincere effort to record in an impartial way, the facts about our original forests.

The big chance for successful practice of forestry in southeastern United States, has come in for a lot of publicity in the past three or four years and it is a poor forester who hasn’t read and talked of this land of “sudden sawlogs” and of various tricks to ease the chafing of interest and taxes.

Possibly some cruisers cruise because they are survivors of an Ames Forester’s summer camp? We may go back even further for a reason, clear back to the time when some peculiar person established the time honored custom of eating.

Some years ago, during the administration of President Roosevelt, I had the pleasure of a short stay in Washington. I was the guest of James Wilson, who was then Secretary of Agriculture.

Iowa is too often thought of by persons Outside the State only as a flat open prairie. Even the Iowa citizens have rarely stopped to sum up the large value of Iowa trees. The attitude that all forest land is worthless can be understood for the man who alone cleared his first small fields from virgin hardwood timber, or assisted his neighbors in "log rolling bees" to rid the land in what ever manner they might of trees. Today however it is different, and Iowa trees are not to be discredited.