- July 7th, 1920 – Adelbert Moot (Buffalo, NY) to JSA
Personal
My dear Mr. Apperson:
At length I have found time to carefully consider your letter of June 30th, and enclosed informing copies of correspondence between you and the Superintendent of State Forests.
Write the Superintendent of State Forests that some of the people behind you think there is no remedy quite equal to the remedy of publicity, and, therefore, that it is your public duty to the people behind you, as well as to the State itself, to print both sides of the correspondence with him, together with photographs and such comments as may be necessary to inform the press of the State, and the people behind you, and all interested in the State forests, of what is going on, on the part of the Attorney General and other State officials, if necessary, or is in the public interest. Tell him your loyal friends insist there is ample power in the State to protect its own interests and stop the removal of timber, where it is necessary to do that, and sufficient appropriations having been made for that purpose, there is no legal or other excuse for all this delay. Without naming your correspondent, you can quote as few or as many of the phrases in this letter as shall serve your purpose, and if the State Superintendent of Forests shall see millions behind you coming up to vote against the Attorney General next Fall when he runs for office again, this will hurt nothing. I do not imagine it will take long for your letter to get to the Attorney General’s office, or for the Attorney general to wake up. There is nothing thieves dread so much as the light of publicity, nothing that sleeping representatives of the State dear so much as publishing the fact that they have slept, in spite of adequate warnings that the State was being robbed.
Sincerely your friend,
Adelbert Moot