Trees And Men

Jack Dionne

(Reprinted in reply to many requests.)

You can learn about men from trees. When a forest of Pine trees is planted by foresters, the little trees start growing very close together. And immediately there begins a mighty but quiet COMPETITION between those little trees to GROW UPV/ARD toward the sunlight and the moisture in the upper air; those two factors that give the tree life and strength. And every little tree in that new forest STRIVES, and stretches, and fights its instinctive way UPWARD and ever upward; a competition that never ends throughout the entire life of the tree. For, by reason of this constant striving UPWARD the tree grows STRONG and STRAIGHT. The treetops merge' making heavy shade below, causing the lower limbs to fall off. The bark covers the scars, and the surface of the trunk becomes smooth and straight and attractive as the tree itself. The grain of the wood is thus made to GROW STRAIGHT without defect, and stronger and more valuable by far than it could ever have been but for this STRMNG. COMPETITION has given this tree strength, straightness, quality'

Sometimes, as an illustration, the forester will pl'ant a lone tree of this same species a hundred or more feet frorn the edge of the young forest, leaving it to grow by itself, out where it gets the sunshine and the available moisture WITHOUT EFFORT. And what happens to this tree, do you know? An amazing thing. Just exactly what happens to a human who is allowed to grow without effort, without competition, without that STRMNG that makes for strength and QUALITY. That lone tree is invariably stunted in its growth. Because there is no need to strive and strain UPWARD, the trunk becomes squat, and is much shorter than the forest trees. Because there is no competition and no shade to destroy them, the lower limbs do not fall off as from the trees of the forest, but become stout, knarly, ugly, as the trunk itself. There is none of the cylindrical symmetry and straightness of the trees of the forest. The fiber of the trunk is twisted, knotty, defective, and entirely lacking in quality. It has little value but for firewood. While a hundred feet away stand its sister trees, tall, straight, round, graceful, strong and straight of fiber, valuable in a thousand ways for man and his uses'

Which proves that Mother Nature knows no SOCIALISM, and that she teaches her children the immutable law that COMPETITION, even in inanimate things, makes for quality, strength, beauty, and usefulness' And this same lesson that Mother Nature teaches concerning trees, she teaches us likewise concerning MEN.