Linton is with us, and we shall
be glad to hear from him.

NUT TREES FOR HIGHWAYS AND PUBLIC PLACES

WILLIAM S. LINTON, SAGINAW, MICHIGAN

For a number of years it has been a source of gratification and pleasure
to me to be identified with the membership of the Northern Nut Growers'
Association. True, "a long distance membership only," but nevertheless a
connection that all must admit has borne fruit, or nuts, as you may
prefer to state it.

To this association and its official journal must be given full credit
for the pioneer work in a great and good movement that will sweep, not
only over the United States, but over every clime and county in the
world's Western hemisphere as well. Your seed sown in the peninsular
state of Michigan, was the first to sprout in a substantial way in so
far as public planting of nut trees by a sovereign state is concerned,
and it was our good fortune to have as staunch supporters for the plan
such able and persistent workers as my good friend, Senator Harvey A.
Penney of Saginaw, Professor A. K. Chittenden of the Michigan
Agricultural College, and last, but not least, Honorable Frank F.
Rogers, Michigan's excellent State Highway Commissioner. Upon the latter
will largely devolve the duty of carrying out the law's provisions, as
provided in Senator Penney's bill passed at the last session of the
Legislature, and that it will be well and practically done, goes without
saying.

And now to my theme, "Should the Country Roadsides be Planted and Why."
The present high cost of living, and in fact the cost of living at any
time is a fruitful and serious problem. Our vast natural resources
during the century gone, of forests, of game, and of grazing lands, have
almost to the point of extinction been rapidly passing away, and it
behooves us, who have profited thereby and now owe a duty to our race to
artificially provide wherever and whenever we can for the future of
humankind. In what better way can this be done than in utilizing the
immense acreage of America's vast system of highways, (now absolutely
wasted except for the sole purpose of travel), to reproduce the very
finest of our country's magnificent trees, to again afford beauty,
grateful shade, valuable timber and the choicest of food in great
abundance for the generations to come.

Were this not a convention devoted to the advancement of nut growing
alone, I would be glad to extol also for road planting fruit trees of
every