Read these sentences from Paragraph 1.
The wrongs done to trees, wrongs of every sort,
are done in the darkness of ignorance and
unbelief, for when light comes the heart of the
people is always right. Forty-seven years ago
one of these Calaveras King Sequoias was
laboriously cut down, that the stump might be
had for a dancing-floor. Another, one of the
finest in the grove, more than three hundred
feet high, was skinned alive to a height of one
hundred and sixteen feet from the ground and
the bark sent to London to show how fine and
big that Calaveras tree was-as sensible a
scheme as skinning our great men would be to
prove their greatness. This grand tree is of
course dead, a ghastly disfigured ruin, but it still
stands erect and holds forth its majestic arms
as if alive and saying, "Forgive them; they know
not what they do."
Which claim do these sentences best support?