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When the Leaves Begin to Turn: September: State
I don't want you to think that there's nothing being done about it; for a great deal is being done about it by the National and State Forestry Services, and by the State legislatures, and by Congress, and by such organizations as the American Forestry Association; and by foresighted and patriotic farmers; and lumber companies and paper and pulp manufacturers; and by the boys and girls in the schools.
But I feel, and they all feel, that to win out we young people must come forward in still larger numbers; and I have been asked to help on in the good work.
Hence, this little book, which is primarily addressed to young people; although it has many things in it that will be new to a lot of grown-ups, I'll be bound; things that it will be well worth their knowing as fellow soldiers of the common good; things that parents and children and uncles and big brothers can read and do together on this important expedition into Treeland in which we are about to engage.
No grown-up will object, I am sure, to the fact that I have put the young people in the front seats, as it were; for we young people are to the future of the country what the leaves are to the tree -- the very making of it. I. THE GOOD THE DEAD LEAVES DO And because leaves are so important to trees -- and, therefore, to every one of us -- and because leaves are particularly interesting in the beauty of their autumn coloring, I begin this, the fifth of our series of "Adventures in Nature's Wonderlands," with the opening of the school year in September, and with the subject of leaves and how they get their lovely colors, and why they fall, and the good the dead leaves do -- things like that. It's a most striking thing about the good citizenship of our friends the trees that, in addition to supplying us with food and shade and lumber, and shutting off the high winds and all, they more than pay "their board and keep" by handing back to the soil every fall more than they have taken out of it during the summer.