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Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la m^thode. rata ) elure. 1 32X 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 6 6 ^^vCV- Letter TU THE PRESIDENT AND COUNCIL ■fc'.y OF TUE MONTREAL BOARD OF TRADE OIIJKOTINO "To UetRidof the Timber" I'REaKSTED nv WILLIAM LITTLE, AT THK MEBTIN'a J1KI,0 OX JUNE lO, 1 8 9 O PRINTED BY JOHN LOVELL & SON. X890. Ws ' I ■i^X O^^jf^ J*"^ '4W*li'V /. a^ ^^i ,,' . ^• tv r J'^i''% \ " •- . ■-■^ - Mi '\if ? «f. *^( iW^R^i&i^tilffiniffiL /£ts^ ^1 ^ * n^' :^ f^^mw ^M::'il?^^' \ LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT AND COUNCIL OF THE MONTREAL BOARD OF TRADE OHJKCTlNIi "To Get Rid of the Timber." •;m' \ PBKSENTEU UY WILLI A M L 1 r r L E , AT THK MEETING HEI.U ON JUNE lO, 1890 PRINTED BY JOHN LOVELL & SON. I Syo. Frovi the Amei-ican Forestry Association (P'onnerly American Forestry CongrcHc) I have obtained the following ESTIMATES OP FORESTRY INTERESTS OF THK UNITED STATES: Acres covered witli wood {growth, or 26 per cent, of total land area 450,000,000 Acres cut over annually 25,000,000 Wood consumed annually : Timber and lumber, cubic feet.... 4,800,000,000 Railroads " .... 500,000,000 Mining timber " .... 150,000,000 Fences " .... 500,000,000 Export " .... 150,000,000 Fuel ♦' .... 18,000,000,000 Total cubic feet 24,000,000,000 Value of wood consumed annually $1,000,000,000 Timber lands belonj^ing to U. S. Government acres 70,000,000 Value of timber reported stolen from public lands during seven years 836,719,1)35 Amount recovered during same period $478,073 Saw-mill capacity of the U. S , ft. R. M 60,000,000,000 Forest administration of United States Government NONE To which may be added FOREST POLICY of the United States and CANADA "TO GET RID OF THE TIMBER." To the President and Council 000,000 000,000 000,000 000,000 )00,000 9,935 78,073 0,000 \E of the Board of Trade, Montreal, Gentlemen : I desire to call your attention to a subject — The Timber Question — which I believe to be of the greatest moment, as affecting every interest in the country, and I am sure all thoughtful persons must view with alarm the decreas- ing area of our valuable pine and spruce forest lands, the decline in quality of the timber itself, and the indifference with which these facts appear to be considered both by the Government and the general public. With your permis- sion, I will endeavor to point out how disastrous it would be ''To Get Rid of the Timber!' I have the honor to be, Gentlemen, Your obedient servant, WILLIAM LITTLE. Montreal, June lo, 1890. "TO GET RID OF THE TIMBER." " To Get Rid of the Tinil)er " was the answer sent from the State of Arkansas, two years ago, to the Michigan State Forestry Commission when inquiring about that State's policy respecting its timber ! Yet, that et, strange as it may appear to many, this is the exact answer would have to be given to-day, if properly replied to by either the Govern- ment of the United States or Canada, as whatever policy they have had (whether of otir. poiiticai party or the other ) has hitherto been simply " to get rid of the timber." The United States parted with its land, having tens of thousands of feet of the finest timber per acre, on exactly the same terms as that having no timber whatever. While Canada sold its land and limber in like manner, and granted timber limits in areas of 50 square miles each and to the extent of thousands of miles at a time, at merely nominal rates, to such of its constituents as might desire this concession, till, at the present moment, it has little of any immediate value left. This being the manner of disposal of such property by the Covernmont, one can readily conceive why it is difficult to create any interest whatever in the preservation of timber property. Moreover, when we consider that only a few years ago the great obstacle to contend against was the size and quan- tity of timber necessary to be removed, in order to locate a home in the wilderness of trees and to make way for the plough and the reaper, it is not to be wondered that this should be the case ; but, now that the railways have spanned the Continent and demonstrated the fact that the country is, on the whole, a prairie, and treeless one, rather than a wooded one — that the timber is peculiar to the coasts, lakes and water courses, while the vast interior is bare of timber — coupled with the further knowledge that this originally vast wooded area, extending from Maine to the Mississippi, can now show "but a few scattered remnants" of its once great wealth of timber, one would naturally expect more intelligent consideration of this important question. Not so, however; in both countries "to get rid of the timber" is still the first order of the day, and the same policy, or rather want of ]jolicy, as regards timber exists — each, in its own way, being equally negligent or indifferent, and equally willing to get rid of the timber. Some slight interest is taken in the subject of forestry — the most mo- mentous question possible as affecting the future welfare of the countiy — by a few thoughtful persons ; but how little efTect it has yet had on the consciousness of the general public, or of even our legislatures, is shown, when, in the arrangement of a tariff by the Government of the United States, the direct aim of which is to reduce the revenue "TO GET RID OF THE TIMfJ E (which is found to be out of all reason in excess of national wants), the duty on limber is not only not removed, hut is so hocus-pocussed as to actually increase this duty, as if timber were some noxious thing to be kept out of the country by legislative enactment ; when the slightest consider- ation of the subject would show that a policy of giving a bounty for the import of timber, to any country willing to part with it, would be a far more common-sense one than its restriction by the imposition of duties of any nature whatever, unless wanting "to get rid of the timber; " while the Canadian Government, on its side, also shows how little realization it has of the existing conditions, by actually consenting to remove the slight pro- tective duty of $2 per thousand on pine and $i per thousand on spruce sawlogs, if the United States Government will reduce the import duty on lumber to $i per thousand feet — thus exhibiting its too great anxiety to "get rid of the timber" — when a reasonable knowledge of the circum- stances would demonstrate that, if an export duty were ever permissible, this is one that has every valid reason for existing, as a measure of self-protection, which should extend not only to sawlogs, but to the manu- factured lumber as well. But, yet, the Governments are not wholly to blame in this matter. We are now living under Responsible Governments, which are expected to administer the affairs of the country in accordance with the well understood wishes of the people, and, if the people are apathetic, or careless and indiflerent, we can hardly expect members of the House of Representatives at Washington, or the Commons House of Parlia- ment at Ottawa, to make any serious effort in the direction of forest conservation, wiien they can tell us that they have difficulties enough on their hands to contend with issues about which we are all in earnest, with- out troubling themselves with questions to which we ourselves seem to give no concern. But, if we might not hope for a consideration of a subject of such vital importance, from the representative houses of either country, we should look with confidence to the gentlemen of the Senate — who, not being so direct- ly responsible to the people, are thus relieved from the cares and anxieties necessarily connected with representative bodies — for the careful considera- tion of just such subjects ; and one would naturally think, if there ever weie a satisfactory reason for the existence of such chambers, it was especially for the discussion of subjects like that now under consideration, and that the question of forestry would be peculiarly suited to and direct- ly within the province of the statesmen of this chamber. But here, too, the same unconcern and indifference appears to exist, and the same will- ingness " to get rid of the timber." It is not because this question — tfie most momentous in its importance that can possibly be conceived as affecting every interest in this country — has not been brought prominently to their notice or that of the public. For years past, my father, and, more recently, myself, have persistently "TO OKT RIU OF THK TIMBER.'' directed public attention to this subject as one of the gravest character. Memorials have been addressed to the United States Congress and the Canadian Parliament. The <]uestion has been fully and ably discussed by intelligent men of both countries; and, notwithstanding tht imminently serious condition of the situation is frlly confirmed, whenever any in- vestigation has been made ; yet the Governments of both countries I was going to say "do nothing." No — worse than that — each does its best "to get rid of the timber" — that of the United States by imposing a restrictive duty on lumber, and that of Canada by hjwering the export duly on logs. The alarming condition is now painfully apparent to tne most casual observer, who will contrast the character of the timber manufactured at the present time, running largely into the different grades of culls, with the magnificent black walnut, black cherry, butternut, cliestnut, hickory, buit(Miwood, whitewood. black and white ash. red and while oak, red and white pine, 'vhich, when not used for fencing or fuel, were burnt up in the log heaps of Ontario in Canada, and in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, N^ichit'^m and Wisconsin in the United States, only a few years ago, and which, when naiuifacturcd, the product thereof, ran largely into the grades of selects and clear lumber; and, while this matter is hardly given a thought by any one, we are almost face to face with a problem that must be cjuickly solved, or disastrous results will surely and speedily follow. New lines of railway are being built, or extended, into districts, dejjcn- dent almost entirely on the timber trade for business — the carrying capacity o( the Lake marine is being increased at an enormous rale — cities, towns, and villages, depending largely on the lumber industry, are enlarging their borders, as if the supi)ly were inexhaustible. f}ut timber cannot be grown like a crop of corn — its growth is a matter, not of years, but of ages, and when once gone, cannot be restored during the lifetime of those now living, while the really good timber of the north Atlantic and l,ake region is not only not inexhaustible, as many suppose, bul actually about exhausted. Beginning at the north Atlantic seaboard, the lumbermen started in to procure that most valuable of all timber, the incomparable white pine ; and, after exhausting the original forests of the New l'",ngland States and coast region, extended their operations through northern New York, Pennsyl- vania, and Canada, till they finally settled in that paradise of the lumberman, the States of Michigan, uisconsin and Minnesota, and here their crusade terminates, for they have now reached die confines ; and one can realize with what relentless energy they have pursued their victim, when we con- sider that the amount of this timber converted into lumber the past season, from this section alone, reached the enormous aggregate of 8,305,833,277 superficial feet (according to the admirable compiled statement of the Northwestern Lumberman) — an amount equal to two-thirds of the entire cut of all deccriptions of timber in every State in the Union but twenty 8 "TO GET RID OF THE TIMBER." years ago (the census of 1870 returning the whole lumber product of all kinds in every .State at 12,755,543,000 feet), while the cut of shingles last year, in the same region, was 4,698,975,800 pieces, made almost exclusively from white pine, which, if added to that sawn into lumber, would make the total consumption of this timber from ibat section alone fully 9,000,000,000 feet. But this frightful slaughter of the forests has about reached its end. The 29,000,000,000 feet reported as standing in lower Michigan ten years ago, by the census of 1880, had dwindled to but 3,000,000,000 or one-tenth that amount last year, as was ascertained after investigation by the editor of the Chicago Timberman ; and if we deduct from the total of 84, 170,000,000 feet, estimated by the census of 1880 as then standing in these three States, that cut during the past ten years, which amounted to 74,463,054,858 feet, it would leave only 9,706,945,142 feet remaining, or but one year's stock on hand, an amount that would have been about consumed in making the 41,303.373,085 shingles turned out during that time, so that had the lumber- men confined their operations to the same character of timber as was estimated for the census, there would not be a merchantable white pine tree standing in that whole territory to-day ! But the necessities of the lumbermen com])elled the cutting of inferior white pine, red pine, hemlock, basswood, white and black ash, and such other floatable timbers as could be obtained by water, as well as hard woods and pine inaccessible to convenient drivable streams, which are now brought to the {mills by rail, or sawn into lumber by mills erected in the vicinity of the timber, so that their o])erations on a reduced scale may be con- tinued for a short time ; but the end is almost at hand. Even to-day, for every mill owner who has five years stock remaining, there are ten who have not one ; and their mills are being dismantled— burnt-over stump lands are being again cut over — all floatable timber of every kind is being taken to the mills to be converted into lumber, and they are now making onslaughts on our Canadian pine to keep their, otherwise useless, saw mills in operation. Now, while this has been the result of the operations of the lumbermen in the Northwest, it must not be i)resumed that those they left behind in the older sections neglected to employ their energies in using up the remaining forests of spruce and hardwoods, '"or they, too, have been equally successful in their efforts " to get rid of the timber." The comparatively small amount of uncut spruce ten years ago in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, returned at 7,265,000,000 feet, with an annual cut of 653,281,000 feet, equal in ten years to 6,532,810,000 feet, would appear to leave but 732,190,000 feet on hand, or a little over one year's supply; and the sjjruce in the Adirondack region of New York, esti- mated ten years ago at 5,000,000,000, with a limited amount in the mountain districts of Pennsylvania, has now been pretty well harvested. So that in this whole vast territory it is now really hard to find any considerable area "TO GKT RID OF THE TIMBER." 9 1 Maine, with an 300 feet, .or one rk, csti- oiintain that in jk; area of country from which the good merchantable white pine and spruce timber have not been removed ! I trust I may be pardoned if. in what is hereafter stated, there may ap- pear what lias elsewhere been nuntioiud by me ; but my object will have been attained if, by any means, any interest whatever may be aroused in this — tlie most momentous question we may ever be called u])on to con- sider ; for, as was truly said m a leader in the N. Y. Sun. when urging the United States Congress during the Session of 1882-3 to remove duties from Canadian. lumber : "No more vital (juestion can come before Congress. Perha])s no Congress has ever been called upon to decide an economic question of greater moment." This sentiment was fully endorsed by nearly the whole metropolitan j)ress, the I'iiiici. Herald^ World, Post,, lYation, Advertiser, Bulletin, Stick up a single large tree, for which an extra price would be paid — it being a matter of great importance to the shipper to have a fair average size in the rafts to be sent to market — a process that 1 was informed had been general through- out the South for a number of yiirs ; and since these large trees appeared to me to be about one out of a th jusand, this process, if ke[)t up for any length of time, would soon leave the country without any considerable amount of good-sized timber remaininj.'. 'J he timber itself, whether large or small, is a very valuable wood, strong and durable, but heavy and resinous, being nearly the same weight as white oak. One would be disappointed, however, if he expected the same sized tree of this timber to have the same amount of heart-wood as in the white pine, for in most sections, esjjecially among the thrifty growing trees, the sapwood is sometimes very thick. I measured on an i8 inch log 5 inches of sapwood — there are some sections of thin saj) timber, but this timber is usually not large. 1 believe that the pine timber further south and west was larger and more plentiful, but my exi^erience was there the same as elsewhere, that the really good timber was " somewhere else " ; and whatever there may be will be fully required at home. On the Pacific, however, one meets with a growth of timber marvellous in its siae and height ; and after seeing a really good tract of Douglas fir or Redwood, one is prepared to believe any report, however apparently incredible it may appear. I have myself, in British Columbia, seen from 50 to 80 trees — many in height from 100 to 150 feet to tlie limbs, 5 to 15 ft. in diameter at the butt — to average probably 7000 feet to the tree, or say from 300,000 to 500,000 feet per acre. This timber is almost exclusively Dnnglas fir, with usually some very large cedars, larger butted but shorter than the fir — the cedars, however* when over 8 ft. in diameter, are usually hollow at the butt ; .still a trunk, 15 ft. in diameter, will often give a dozen or more logs out of a cut larger than our present eastern averages. There are also scattering white pine trees very tall, round and sound, many up to seven feet, and even over this on the stump ; but the number of such trees is not great. But, if any one were to fancy from this that there was an inexhaustible supply of this kind of timber, he would be greatly mistaken. These really fine tracts of timber were not to be found of as great extent as I had imagined. They are confined to special spots, usually at the foot-hills of the mountains and along ravines bordering on rivers, creeks and around the lake , but not on the river bottom lands, which are usually cotton-wood, alder and other varieties of hard-wood. This Pacific Coast timber will, however, all be required for Lower California, South America, Australia and other foreign markets, but which, if called on for supplies for the East, would not only require the five existing railways, but give twenty-five lines more each ten million dollars annual freight to trans- port it across the continent. "TO GET RID OF THE TIMBER.'* 19 Knowing as I did at that time how little value was placed on such pro- perty in America, and how little value the public placed on the " free gifts of Providence," when they saw no immediate money in them, and that in all civilized foreign countries, many of them far better supplied with timber for their immediate necessities than either the United States or Canada, the smallest twig or fagot was looked upon as property of some value, I addressed a letter to the London Times in August, 1S83, with the hope that if Americans would not look upon such property as of value, foreigners might do so, reference having been made by Mr. Plimsol to the difficulty of finding proper investment for British capital. From this letter I extract the following: " When speaking of the subject of investments, I crave the favor of drawing your attention to a source of investment, which I believe to be not only one of the best and safest possible, but one which would be productive of incalculable good to the countries in which the investment is made, as well as of benefit to the people of tliis country (Great Britain). I allude to the investment of capital in the timber lands of America, for, owing to conditions which it might take uj) too mucii of your valuable space to ex- plain, this description of property has hardly yet begun to assume the status of capital at all, it having been considered almo-it up to the present moment generally, and is now to a large extent considered simply, as something on which to employ capital rather than as capital itself. This fact has been productive not only of losses to the manufacturers of timber, but is the cause of a great deal of dissatisfaction among those who have its disposal, as it has continually led, when any encouragement has been given by slightly advanced prices, to over-production and consequent loss. " In confirmation of the above fact, it is pertinent to state that it is only within the last eighteen months tliat any concerted effort has been made in America to draw attention to the importance of this subject. Two meetings were held last year, — one in Cincinnati and the other in Montreal — of an asso- ciation called the American Forestry Congress, which were attended by pro- minent men both from the United States and Canada; and what little inte- rest there may now be taken in the subject may be justly attributed to the discussions and information furnished at these meetings, so that as yet it may be said that there is hardly a public opinion formed on the subject, not- withstanding it is the most momentous (luestion for the future welfare of the United States and Canada, it being not only the largest manufacturing interest of Canada, but also of the United States, whether regarded in the value of products or number of operatives employed, and yet we are informed by those specially engaged by the United States Government to investigate the subject, that the supplies of those descriptions of timbr — the white pine {pinus-strobus — the yellow pine of the British market) and spruce which have furnished in the past nearly the whole of the commercial timber of the Northern States and Canada, and now supply fully three-fifths of the whole stock of this indispensable material — will have entirely disappearjd from the I ' 30 "TO GET KID OF THE TIMBKK." 1 ' forests of the United States within the short space of seven years, at the present reckless rate of cutting. " My object in drawing attention to this matter is to show the increasing ^alue of this i)roperty, arising from the destruction going on in the existing supjtly of timber, and that while the consumption of this material keeps pace with the increasing wealth and population of the country, thi supply is not only of a limited amount, but is rapidly diminishing. " Moreover, it may be said that whatever sentiment has existed in America has been, and is still largely so, rather towards getting rid of the forests as rapidly as possible than preserving them; so that while millions of money are employed, and ready to be ftirnished to any amount by bankers and others for the conversion of timber, there is none whatever employed in its preservation or protection." And this is so, simply because Americans have not yet become educated to the knowledge of considering timber as property capable of being con- verted into money at any time when required, as is the case in all other civilized countries, but rather as something on which to eni])loy capital in its conversion for market ; so that while millions upon millions are ready to be used or loaned for its conversion — yes, even for its destruction — there is none whatever forthcoming for its preservation, not to mention such a remote idea as its production. And I might here say that every year since then pine stumpage in Canada and the United States has been rising in value, and what could then be bought at $4 per thousand on the stump in Michigan cannot to-day be had for less than $10 per M, though the product in lumber has but slightly increased in price, while the relative increase in value of standing pine timber in Wisconsin and Minnesota has been still greater, though it has not yet reached one-quarter its . actual value for home requirements. We will no doubt be told that nothing could have been done ; but this is not so, as a great deal might have been done if the lumbermen had con- ducted their operations properly, when not only would the country be much better off but the lumbermen as well. In March, i88i, about the time when tlie actual condition of the pine forests (which condition was previously known by all well-informed lumbermen), as ascertained by the gentlemen connected with the census, was annoimccd to the public, I published a letter in the New York TimcSy from which I transcribe the following closing paragraph : — " It is to be hoped, now that the Government has come into possession of the facts, it will take means to enlighten the public on this most important sub- ject. An enlightened public opinion can do much to aid in stemming the tide of destruction which is now going on with reckless precipitancy. A knowledge of the value of their property will cause owners to be more careful of it, and not be disposed to part with it to go abroad at one-tenth the value it will have in a few years standing in their forests for their own wants. The substitution of spruce, hemlock and other woods for such purposes as they "TO OKT BID OF TMK TlMKEIl." 31 reservation "or less than are suitable; by sto])ping the frightful butchery of this timber, which is now going on by the use of circular saws, that turn one-quarter of the log into sawdust ; by allowing the younger trees to grow; by the C.ovcmincnt withhold- ing its timber lands from sale ; by preventing, if possible, the making of sciuare timber in the woods, by whirh one third of the tree is cut into score blocks and shavings, furnishing the most fruitful sources of fire ; and by throwing open the ports to the free entry of timber to any country that may be willing to spare it ; and now tliat this timber is about gone, if the lumber papers will give their patrons correct information on this important subject, some little may yet be done to extend the supply of this indispensable timber." I think if the suggestions above thrown out had been acted on at the time, that matters would not now be in quite as bad a shape as they actually are, and though I know, as I have said above, theClovcrinnents are not wholly to blame, yet in this respect they are specially to blame, in so legislating as to cause the public to believe it is a good thing " to get rid of the timber " — the Government of the I'nited States by imposing duties on timber products, and that of Canadi by aiding in any manner in getting rid of the timber. Though we in Canada may not be in as bad condition as our neighbors, yet it is rather owing to having a more difficult country to work in than from any care on thepart of the Government or even the lumbermen, that we have still a moderate amount of i^ood pine and spruce timber remaining ; and lest it might be thought that my own representations might be warped in any way by the imminently serious manner in which I view this question, one about which I do not hesitate to say I am thoroughly in earnest, I will cpiote a few para- graphs from the admirable report on the Canadian Forests, submitted to the Government about twelve years ago by thejlon. H. G. Joly de Lotbini^re (Seigneur, late Premier of the Province of Quebec), and which I may here say is the first really valuable report we ever had on this subject; and since the forests have not improved in any respect since then, I trust it may tend to allay the very uneasy feeling of the American lumbermen lest we should swamp the United States with pine and spruce lumber, were the pernicious duties, so frequently referred to, removed. And after referring to the older settlements of the Province of Quebec being painfully bare of trees, Mr. Joly sums up his Report on " the Present State of our Forests " by saying, "that it is very far from satisfactory and leaves much room for improvement." But in his very able Report he does not stop short at "the state of the forests," but shows his clear insight into everything appertaining to the subject, by accounting for the facts of a continued over-production of wood side by side with rapidly receding and diminishing supplies. In alluding to the over-production he says : — " There cannot be a greater waste of any marketable commodity than by over-profluction. It is unavoidable, as the extraordinary success of any given branch of industry is certain to produce it ; but generally it does not take long after its fatal effects are felt before the evil cures itself. Unfortunately our timber trade is an exception to that rule. In the face of a glutted market we persist in our over-production, as if we expect to relieve the 22 "TO GET RID OF THE TIMBER." feN i^ii market by glutting it still more." And elsewhere he says : — " We are not spending the income or annual profits of our forests, but the forests themselves; not the interest, but the capital." (^For further extracts from Mr. jhly's report set Appendix.) The foregoing is a picture made some twelve years ago of the condition of the Canadian forests by a gentleman thoroughly conversant with the timber trade — an enthusiast on the subject of forestry, and having recourse to every available source of information on the subject. What can we gather from his statements, but that Canada is almost in the same deplorable condition as the United States as regards its stock of merchantable Pine tim- ber. And that he has not since discovered any more favorable aspect in this matter, we can gAther from his remarks in an address delivered by him recently before the Natural Plistory Society of Montreal, in which, while paying a grace- ful tribute to the memory of my father, he indicates to a certain extent his present opinion regarding the forests. In this connection he said: — " The late James Little of Montreal, who was the first to sound the alarm, deserves to be gratefully remembered by Canada. When every one treated our pine as if the supply were inexhaustible, he was the first to call attention to its rapid disa])pearance. His warnings were met not only with indiffer- ence, but with ridicule. Now, the eyes of the most sceptical are opened, and they must admit that he was right; but it is sad to see them turn around now, and afiirm that it is no use devising means for the protection of our forests, because there is nothing left in them worth protecting. There is still a good deal left worth caring for and improving. It is late, but not too late." Such language from such a source should at least cause our Government to give some little thought to the imminence of the situation. There is a " good deal worth caring for and improving " hardly warrants the idea that we have any such superabundance as to offer a bounty " to get rid of the timber." There is no doubt we have still some good Pine and consid- erable good Spruce timber remaining, tliat witli careful and prudent manage- ment would supply the home and the export trade to Europe and South America for a good many years, yet it would supply for but a limited period the thousands of millions of feet that will be required by the United States, when it has parted with its White Pine and .Spruce timber, and when it has no other source of supply for this description of wood than Canada — and from no other source can it be obtained so cheaply as it can from Canada i so that if we act with prudence, and husband our wealth of timber, there is yet a great future in store for our country. But it is not by using our efforts to get rid of our timber resources in the reckless manner we have been doing in the past, but ratlier by restricting the cutting, by more care- ful manufacture, and by considering every growing tree as so much capital not to be parted with witiiout valuable consideration, that we shall accom- plish this object. For this result we shall not have long to wait, for though it may take a few more years to entirely exhaust the White Fine timber of the United States, by far the largest portion of it lies within the extreme li "TO GET RID OF THE TIMBER." 23 [ the income the capital." condition : with the g recourse It can we deplorable ; Pine tim- Dcct in this im recently ng a grace- ain extent said : — the alarm, )ne treated 11 attention th indiffer- re opened, them turn otection of ng. There ite, but not overnment arrants the ' to get rid nd consid- it manage- and South ted period ted States, hen it has ada — and Canada 5 iber, there using our r we have ore care- h capital U accom- br though timber of extreme Northwest, contiguous to that great prairie world which is now being so rapidly developed, and which will require all the timber that grows there In fact, the population of the prairie districts are even now planting trees to jirovide for their future wants. Moreover, a knowledge of the true condi- tions has so advanced the price of standing Pine in the West, that the price of the manufactured article must continue to advance very rapidly for the future, as there is no other wood in America or elsewhere that is applicable for so many purposes and of such general use. It has often been said that there would soon be found a substitute for wood ; if so, it is quite time the discoverer brought it forward, for up to the present the ingenuity of the " evtirlasting Yankee" has not even touched the matter. Notwithstanding the fences of wire, the use of iron in building, the terra cotta and straw lumber, the consumption of our old friend wooden lumber increased nearly 50 per cent, in the United States in the ten years rom 1870 to 1880, the former being 12,755,543,000, and the latter 18,091- 356,000 feet, while a still greater increase has taken place in the last ten, years, so that it is anticipated the present census for 1890 will show, as has been said above, the enormous total of 30,000,000,000 feet of sawn lumber inanufactured annually in the United Stales, an amount that can hardly be comprehended by the mind, but sufficient to load a train of cars 25,000 miles long, or enough to encircle the earth at the equator! I have no doubt that many gentlemen will think that I have been a little cairied away by my own enthusiasm on the subject of forestry, but I will here give the views held on this question by a couple of intelligent foreigners. Dr. Felix L. Oswald, in a paper on " The Climatic Influences of Vegeta- tion," written for the Popular Science Monthly, says : — " aU over Spain and Portugal, Southern Italy, Greece, Turkey, .\sia Minor, Persia, in Western Afghanistan and tiirouj;h Western Africa, from Morocco to the valley of the Nile, the aririty of the soil makes the strufjgle for existence so hard that, to a vast majority of the inhabitants, life, from being a blessing, has been converted into a curse. " Southern Spain, from Gibraltar to the head waters of the Tagus, nnaintains now only about one-tenth its former population, and Greece about one-twentieth. As late as A.U. 670, a jjood while after the rise of the Mohammedan power, the country now known as Tripoli, and distinct from Sahara only through the elevations of the mountains, was the seal of eighty-five Christian Idshops, and had a population of 6,000,000, of which number three-fourths of one per cent, are now left, " The rivers of some of these count'^ies have shrunken to the size of their former tribu- taries, and from Gibraltar to Samarcand the annual rainfall has decreased till failure of • crops has become a chronic complaint. \nd all this change is due to the insane destruc- tion of forests. The great Caucasian Sylvian, that once adorned the birth-land of the white race from the Western Pyrenees to the front hills of the Hinialajas, has disappeared, Of the forest area of Italy and Spain of the elder I'liny about two acres in a hundred are left ; in Greece hardly one." And returning to a consideration of .some portion of this country he s.ays ; — " The States of Ohio and Indi.nna and the southern portion of Kentucky and Michigan, i; ' I'! r I I 24 "TO GET RID OF THE TIMBER," so recently a part of the great Eastern-American forest, have even now a greater percen- tage of treeless area than Austria and the Northern German Empire, that have been settled anrl cultivated for upwards of a thousand years. " The true basis" of naticmal wealth is not gold, but wood. Forest destruction is the sin that has cost us our earthly paradise. War, pestilence, storms, fanaticism and intem- perance, together with all other mistakes and misfortunes, have not caused half as much permanent damage as that fatal crime against the fertility of our Mother Earth." And the Hon. Carl Schurz, late Secretary of the Interior, U.S., in an address delivered before the American Forestry Association at Philadel- phia^ Oct., 1889, from which I extract a few remarks, says : — " 1 know the advocates of the cause to which you are devoted are looked upon by many as a set of amiable sentimentalists, who have fallen in love with the greenness of the woods, and break down in hysteric wails when a tree is cut down. I assure you I have been led to take an earnest interes-t in this subject b\ considerations of an entirely unsenti- mental, practical nature, and this no doubt is the case with most of you. T\)e more study and thought I have given the matter, the firmer has become my conviction that Mi' Ji's- truction of the forests of this country 'Mill be the murder of its future prosperity ana pio- gress. This is no mere figure of speech, no rhetorical exaggeration. It is simply the teaching of the world's history, which no fair-minded man can study witiiout reaching the same conclusion. " No country ever sogreat and rich, no nation ever so powerful, inventive, and enterprising, can violate the laws of nature with impunity. We mosi grievously delude ourselves if we think that we can form an exception to the rule. And we have made already a most dan- gerous beginning, and more than a beginning, in the work of desolation. The destruction of our forests is so fearfully rapid that, if we go on at the same rate, men whose hair is already grey will see the day when in the United States, from Maine to California, and from the Mexican Gulf to Puget Sound, there will be no forest left worthy of the name. "Who is guilty of this destruction ? It is not merely the luml)erman cutting tirnlier on his own land for legitinrate use in the pursuit of business gain ; it is the lumberman who, in doing so, destroys and wastes as much more without l)cnefit to anybody. " It is not merely the settler or the miner taking logs for his cibin, anil fence rails and fire- wood, or timber for building a shaft, but it is the settler and lire miner laying wa^te acres or stripping a mountain slope lo get a few sticks. It is all these, serving indeed legitimate wants, but doing it with a wastefuliress criminally reckless. "It is the timber thief, the tourist, the hunter, the mining prospector who, lighting his camp fire in the wootts to boil water for his coffee or to fry his bacon, and leaving that fire unextinguished when he proceeds, sets the woods in flames and delivers countless square miles of forest to destruction. ' " It is all these, but it is something more, and, let us confess it, something worse. It is a public opinion looking with indifference on this wanton, barbarous, disgraceful vandalism. It is a spendthrift people recklessly w.isting its heritage. It is a Government careless of the future and unmindful of a pressing duty. " These are words, not of silly sentimentalists, but of thoughtful, intelligent men. that know wliereof they speak, born and educated in a country where improvidence is almost considered a crime — and uttered with the serious earnestness of positive conviction. Ves, let us go on in our reckless extravagance, and we will soon be brought to a realization of what it means " to get rid of the timber." It must not be inferred, from anything I have said, that J. am in favor of "TO GET RID OF THE TIMBER." 25 worse. U is export duties, or of restrictive duties of any nature in our trade relation with our cousins across the line, for I have always advocated the freest trade relations between the two countries, believing, as 1 do, that where the conditions are so nearly alike, any advantages possessed by one would be fully counterbalanced by other advantages gained by the other, and the general result would be beneficial to both. But, while the U. S. Government imposes a duty on sawn lumber, we should retain at least such duty on saw logs as not to place our own people at a disadvantage, and give the Americans the V'lole benefit to be derived from our own timber ; and I feel that, considering the rapidity with which the white pine and spruce timber of the United States and Canada is being exhausted, any (isc.il policy tending to the loss of this timber without some special advantage to be gained therefrom would be disastrous to Canada, so that I do not view with satisfaction the consent, said to have been given, of removing the whole exi>ort duty from saw logs, in case the United States Government reduces the import duty on lumber to $i per thousand feet. The furthest concessions I would think of making would be "free logs for free lumber." It would be in my opinion to the advantage of the people of Canada for the Government to pay the manufacturers such profits, for the next five years, as they can show they made during the past five years, over the value of the standing timber, on U. S. shijjmonts, rather than enter into any arrangement tending " to get rid of the timber." And I also say that it would be better for the Province of Quebec to take the settlers, whom they are even now inducing to locate on land valuable only for the timber — far better, as I have so often said, for the good of the country, even to board them at ihe public expense at our most costly hotels than to permit tliese misguided people to wear out their lives in a struggle for a miserable existence from the Laurentian rocks, whicli are at once exposed when they attempt to clear the land of timber — the only valuable crop it is capable of producing. But, better still, to pay these people to plant in timber tens of thousands of the acres that have already been rendered worthless, by clearing off the timber, and from which to attempt to make a living is simply a strife against nature, Lest it might be thought 1 am pressing the matter of planting trees as a means of providing for future use (a measure by no means so absurd as many will, no doubt, consider it), I may here remark, the whole immediate ebject I liave in view is to protect from spoliation and waste the sup|ilies that a beneficent Providence has already planted for our use, and which we are destroying with a prodigality so apijalling as to fully justify its being characterized by my father and Mr. Schurz, in almost identical terms, as " wanton, barbarous, disgraceful vandalism." Less than twenty years ago, 1 visited nearly all the saw mills between here to and including Quebec, and nearly all the mills along and on the tributaries of the St. Lawrence were sawing almost exclusively white pine 26 "TO GET RID OF THE TIMBER. saw logs — while at present the few which still remain are confined almost entirely to cutting spruce and hemlock, much of this even of an inferior grade. And the logs now sawn at the Ottawa mills will not turn out over si.xty per cent, of their stock into grades better than culls. And the rafts of superior pine that ran from 80 to 100 feet average (about twenty-five years ago I myself sold a raft in Quebec of 148 feet average) now run from 50 to 80 cubic feet average. I have already said that the present annual jjrod action of sawn lumber in the United States would load a train of cars 25,000 miles long, or long enough to encircle the earth, and I fancy some will be surprised at such figures ; but it is figures like these that force all who will reflect on the matter, to use expressive adjectives whenever treating of its imi)ortance ; but this sawn lumber is only a small part of the forest freight, there are still all other forest products ; and when we add timber for railway and fencing, mining and export, round and hewn tim!)er, we have our train loaded 72,000 miles ; and if to this we then add the fircvood, etc., amounting alone to 216,000 miles, we have a total train of 288,000 miles in length, or more than enough to reach from the earth to the moon, still leaving our lumber train encircling the earth with 23,000 miles of a train to s])are ! — its weight alone, if gr-en, over five hundred million tons, or enough to load Jive hundred thousand (500,000) ships 0/ one thousand (1000) tons each I The whole of these timber products handled annually by the American workman not only shows what a mighty weapon is the axe in the hands of the skillful chopper, but leaves all other agencies — whether of fire, Hood, or tempest — so completely in the rear, that in the race of destruction they may be said to be practically " no where." I have shown above that two-thirds of this enormous amount of timber is annually consumed by our immediate neighbors, separated from us only by an imaginary line or by short stretches of water. I have also shown that the forests of this vast territory, extending from the confines of New Brunswick to the head waters of the .Mississippi, are almost on the verge of immediate exhaustion ; and yet so ignorant or indif- ferent are the people of tiie United States to the seriousness of the situation, that they are even now higgling about what s])ecial restrictions they can im])ose upon Canadian lumber. Let them increase the duty by all means. " Olym- pus high " if they like — the higher the better in my opinion — for they will then the sooner know how grievously they have erred, and how imprudent they have been, when they are compelled to pay these duties themselves, and Canadians are able to get what prices they want for their lumber. But, if we continue stocking American saw mills with logs, taken from our already too scanty supply, to forestall the markets in advance of our own manufacture, and keep slashing away at our tjmber as we have always been doing, overstocking the markets as if it were something to be exterminatf.'d at any cost, and, with the Government, tht; capital, and, I may say, "TO GET RID OF THE TIMBEK.'' 27 the public of the country, wlien not indifferent, all arrayed against the forests, and animated with the same destructive impulse, we will no doubt soon be able " to get rid of the timber," and get rid at the same time of the most valuable property we ever had, or may ever expect to have in our country. Even the poet cannot remain silent (as appears, from the following lines taken from the New York Sun) when contemplating the condition of "A TREELESS COUNTRY." " I had a dream xvhich was not all a dream." ■ " A great State was a desert, and the land I.ay bare and lifeless under sun and storm, Treeless and shelterless. Spring came erman in his previous operations. It may Ix; remarked, con- cerning the burning of timlier, that it is only in the most exceptional cases that the large green tiniljer is burnt at all. A few instances have occurred where timber, growing on peaty land, in a very dry season, the soil itself taking fire, has l)een burnt (or in rocky mount.ainous districts having little soil covering the rocks), hut in most other cases it is only the dead or defective trees that burn, — the green timber being scorched, not burnt ; but since the scorch- ing, if severe, kills the tree, it becomes necessary to cut the timber within a year or so, or the grubs will injure it, though, if removed within a year, there is little injury done, since the grubs do little more than penetrate the almost worthless sapwood the first season, and the APPENDIX. 31 timber ini^iht ail be removed iKifore serious loss is sufTerefl, so that, with projier legisla- tion, aiui iui enlightened public opinion to lead the American to look upon the tree as one of his best friend.-, there shoidd he little danger from tire. In making the aliove niisleaer. Hut, .is I said above, with proper legislation and .an enlightened public opinion, there would be little property less liable to risk from fire than forest lands. I am, sir, your obedient servant, WILLIAM LITTLE. The Royal Hotel, Edinburgh, Aug. 14, 1S83. g to my egret to outrage- d times To this ommiltee Is ; and a, I had ic l.icts 5 stated ive not le past standing matter I c. New a grand hich the ed, con- le large u peaty t.ainous .lead or scorch- , or the nee the ind the Professor Charles S.Sargent — under whose supervision the admirable report for the United States Government, of the census of 1880, on the Forest Trees of Nortii America, was prepared — a gentleman of exalted char- acter, and possessing means, opportunity and inielHgence for the investi- gation, and wlio is, by all odds, best informed about the forests of any man in America, says, when treating on the subject of" Forest Fires: " " The condition of the forests of Maine is interesting. They show that forest preservation is perfectly practicable in the Atlantic region, at least when the importance of the forest to the community is paramount " The very existence of the iState depended upon the maintenance of the forest. The great forests of pine could not be restored, but the preservation of the few remnants of these for- ests was not impossible." I take the lilrerty of putting the remainder of this paragraph in italics. " Hrcs do not consume forests upon which a -.ohole communily is dependent for support, and methods for the continuance of such foiests are soon found and readily put into execution. Tlu forests of Maine, once considered practically exhausted , still yield largely and continuously, and the public sentiment v-hich has made possible their prctec- tion is the one hopeful symptom in the whole country, that a change of feeling in regard to forest property is gradually taking place. The exfeiience of Maine shows that where cli- matic conditions are favorable 10 forest growth, the remnants of the original forest can be preset'^'cd and nc^o forests cieated, as soon as the entire community finds forest preservation really essential to its material prosperity." The late Dr. F. B. Hough, also in his Report upon Forestry (U.S.), 1882, p. 23 1, adds his testimony lo the reproductivencssofthe forests in Maine, by mentioning the following, concerning the great tire which occurred near Moosehead Lake, in 1825 : — " In portions of Maine that were overrun by fire in the same year (1825), and .about the same time, pine and spruce timber were succeeded by white pine, with some white birch and r>= ^ pi 32 APPENDIX. poplar. The pine intheinterval of fifty-five years has grown up into a dense forest, now of much greater value llian the original forest growth." And in a foot note he says : — " It is the opinion of a corresjxjndent that the birch and pojjlar will be eventually crowdrd out by the pine and spruce, leaving the forest with the same kind of timlwr as before the tire." Dr. Hough also inserts a letter from a correspondent in J3urlington county, New Jersey, wlio writes : — " I have had under my cnre large tracts of growing timber, and have had very little loss from (ires. (.»ur plan is to burn over our tracts early in the spring, l>efoie the sap starts — burning up all the underbrush leaves, etc. We have found that a five in tebruary does not hut the growing tinilier ; and should summer fires eonie in from adjoining pro- perty that has been neglecteri, they have nothing to feed on but very green leaves, etc., and they are much more easily controlled. Even if they go through the woods they find little to burn ; they get up but little heat, and do but little damage. The Pemberton and New Jersey Railroad runs through our tract, and summer fiien are common ; but they liardly require looking after, so far as our tr.act is concerned. I think there should be a Knv, requiring every owner of timber and brush land in our general pineries to burn all the leaves that may fall during the winter, thus leaving no fuel for summer fires." THE TIMBER TRADE AND RECU'ROCITY. I here insert a few extracts from a letter on " The Timber Trade and Reciprocity," submitted by my fatlier to the National (U.S ) Board of Tr.ide meeting, held at Detroit, Oct. 22, 1S73, in which, after pointing out the localities h.iving any considerable amount of valuable timber, and the scar- city of this material as compared with the enormous demands made upon the forests, he stated his views, from the Canadian standpoint, on the sub- ject of reciprocity in lumber with the United States, and though one of the earliest and most ardent advocates of protection to home industry, yet he was also among the first to propose freedom of trade between Canada and the United States — the only stumbling block being the dread lest Canada would thereby lose all her valuable timber without adequate returns. I mention these facts as I observe that the Atnerican lumbermen never approach Con- gress without mentioning his name, as the possessor of extensive Canadian timber limits, in order thereby, 1 suppose, to lessen the weight of his warn- ings. The fact is, however, that considering as he did the removal of the duties by the U.S. would be injurious to Canada, he never afterwards favored their removal. In this letter he treats of reciprocity in lumber as follows : " It is, I am aware, the general opinion of the people of the United States that Canada benefitted largely by the Reciprocity Treaty while in force ; but the very rever.se is the fact as regards lumber — Canada lost millions by that Treaty. It stimulated production amongst us to such an extent, that the same description of lumber which, the year before it took effect, sold in the liufi'alo market at from thirteen to fifteen dollars per lliousand feet, paving one dollar duty, could not be disposed of in the same market at ove v seven dollars per thousand three years after Reciprocity came in force, and it remained a; lower prices than it could be produced until the necessities of the war forced them up. The raw material which would now be worth millions of dollars, were it staniling in the forests, never re- turned a farthing to the operators or the country ; and not only so, but the cost of a great deal of the labor expendet! in manufacturing it went also to add wealth to our neighbors across the line, while thiiir own timl)er was so far preserved for future use. They and they only were the gainers by reciprocity in lumber, while nearly all on this side engaged in supplying their wants were ruined. " In inexcusable ignorance of the limber question, or an astonishing want of foresight on the pjirt of the lumbermen both in Canada and the United States, they continue to Ijuild new and more capacious mills, and increase the manufacturing capacity of the old ones, a3 if tliere were a strife among them to rid the country of some noxious thing, which their greatest effort should lie made to destroy as rapidly as possible, or as if timber could be grown like a crop of weeds, and the Ciovernmenls of both countries are doing all in their power to help them on in this destructive policy — th.it of Canada by forcing its timber ter- ritory on the market many years before it is required by the trade, and thus sacrificing it to the injury of the revenues, the country and the lurabernen, by encouraging overproduc- tion, ami that of the United States by disposing of its timber lands for next to nothing, and APPKNDIX. 38 gilt on mild I1CH. as their a be their er ter- cing it roduc- and tho.im|i(isitic)ii of duties on iln- forLigii nrlicli', instead of forcing thim to liii-land .ind pre- serve so vnluahle and indespensahle a product tiy every means within its power. (Jiving a Iwnus for the introduction of (Canada luml)er, and putting' a fence around what timber they have, woidd l)c a wiser policy for tliem to pursue. I.ct tiu'ni, however, slaughieraway ; they will wake up to the folly of such a course when it is too late. *' lieing satisfied that Canada would be injured by reciprocity in lumber with the United States, as I am contident it would— as it did iluriny it,* continuance — have the cflect of stimulat- ing our lumbermen, who, as a body, are the reverse of being conservative in their business, to increase tiie present excess of over-production, and thus again -iacritice in the interest of our neighbors tiie most valuable product we possess, and which it would take generations to replace were it possible to do so by any eflTorts we could make. I, for one, therefore, am by no means anxious for a renewal of the Treaty. The time will come when they will Ix; glad to get our lumber on any terms." JAMKS LITTLE. It is worthy of remark, as showing the altered conditions which have taken place sinct^ the time above mentioned — wlien my father was carrying on extensive Itmibcring operations in Western Canada — that this was when the American lumbermen were on their raid westward, passing through Canada to Micliigan and tlie West, and before any extraordinary development of the Itimber trade had begun west of (."anada, that the production ol Canada had sticli an influence on the lumber trade of the United States. If I were to mention the names of Americans then operating on this side, I would include among them most of those lumber kings whose names are now familiar as '' household words" in .\Iichij;an, Wisconsin and Minnesota; and instead of this section of Canada being at all a factor in the trade, as it was no doubt at that time, were the duties removed, so little pine is now remaining, that Buffalo, N. Y., above mentioned, would be found the cheapest [flace to purchase lumber should it be re'[uired in any (juantity by that part of Canada at the [iresent time. Again in 1S76, in a ])amphlet to the public, he writes on "THE TIMBER .SUPPLY QUESTION." " When, a few years ago, it was rumored that the coal fields of Great llritain woulil not supply the then rate of consumption for more than two or three generation^, a general alarm at the prospect of so terrible a calamity, so soon to fall on the nation, immediately manifested itself. It became the ijuestion of the day, the I'less was full of it, had daily leaders on it, and it was made a subject of Parliamentary inquiry, and until it was s.atis- factorily ascertained, by scientific investigations and surveys, that there was coal enough in the country for many centuries, the question wa.s the one absorbing topic of conversation and di.scussion amongst all cla.sses in tiie liritish Isles. '• The ([uestion of the tinilxir supply here is of as much importance to us and the people of the neighboring States as that of the coal supply, which so powerfully exercised the minds of the people of Britain, could possibly l>e to them. Vet the most shameful waste of this indispensable material has Ix'come the order of the day, while our Boards of Trade, our political economists and statesmen, and the leading journals uf the country, totally ii.;nore the subject as not worthy of their slightest notice. Tllic nirEsrioN riius TRKAIKD WITH so MUCH INDIKKERKNCE ANU NKGLECT Wll,!,, IIOWEVI-R, IT IS CERTAIN, REKORE MANY VEAR.^ ROI.l. ROt'.ND, lORCK lIStLE ON THE AriENTlON OE THE WHOLE COMMU- NITV TO SUCH A DEliRh'E AS TO DWINDLE ALL OTHER (JIJESriON.s INTO C ITER INSIGNIFI- CANCE IN COMT.VRISDN. " And now, what of our neighbors .across the line in this respect ? " They are following exactly the same course, hut in a yet inoie wasteful, reckless and unprofitable manner, if we may except our own N'ew lirunswick operators, who appear determined not to be outdone in their efforts at national suicide. " The Census returns of the United .States of 1870 showed a production of sawed lum- Ikt alone of 12,755,543,000 feet, and if we add to that enormous amount all the timber made into .shingles, all made into hewn, flatted and round timter, used in home consump- tion and exported, all that is wasted and used for other purposes (not including firewood and Il ' I ' 34 APPENDIX, that consunii'd in clearings), aenl all Itio huge increase in tonsiimption at llie jircscnt time, we may estimate the whole anioiinliiDW at 2o,ooo,(vx3,noo of fft't, ei|iial to about 30,000, ocxj nf tons, from wliicli it will \>l seen /A 1/ it n'oiihi liqiiii:- fifty per cut. morf than the shi[<- pin); of the xuholt world, ii'/iuh has n tcnud^,- of liut 18,000,000, tv fiti^ht tliat ainonnt ficm Ihdr Pacific States aiiit Teiritories to the Atlantic 'ta icanl" (the forcgoiiij; figures are, of course, now nearly (louMeil),'' fiDiii whence it must then he carried for distribution, at an enormous additional cost, to the ])oiiitsofconfuni|)lion,evcn as far west as the Slates, which now furnish their thousands of millions of suii|)ly, — and wlicn, besides, million-< of con- sumers will be added to the [lopuhition ealliiit; for supplies, to intensify, if possible, the ruin and distress which will be entailed on the inhabitants and every industrial pursuit of their country. It is only within a y(ar or two ihcir political i.cononiists and their I'ress, with the cxeeiition of a few luml>ci papers in the West, have dceincil it worth their while to give a thought to the subject, and that more with lefcrtnie to its inlhience on the rain fall than to the question of the extent of the supjily to satisfy the future wants of their country. "And here I wouhl remark that, with respect to the Adirondack territory, it would Ik; better for the State of New Nork to jiay many millions of dollars for llu' preservation of the forests clothing its mountains, than allow them to Ix^ stripjicd of the tiinl)er which acts as a reservoir for their great Hudson River. Once this rirgiou is a inomeiit's consiiloiation to, in (hsfussinji thi' i)u<:-.tiuii of supply ; ami yet from tlie iiifonnati.jn I liave obtained on llie sidijccl, from lho^e whose lives have lieen mostly spent in the territory. I have every reason to conclude that, at the rate ofconsuuip- tion t;oin); on, a MUfjIe decadi- will be suflicient time to totally e\ha\ist its resources. And a', we will l)e ealleii on to supply the deficiency sliortly to arise in the .Stales, the time will bi- correspondingly shortened." '* is only luopcr to rem.irk that though the <')tta\v.i is still producing Uirgi.'ly, yet iIil' mills have been sawing lor years a good deal of inferior linilKT that was not at that time considered worthy of conversion into lumlier. •' '111'- valley "f ihi' St. Lawrence from Montreal to the Rulf never had a great amount of pine liiiilK-r on it. The .St. Mauiice held more than thi; whole territory besiile, and that jsiver has been umlergoing a course of depletion fir many years, " I would now o(Ter a few lemaiks regardinj; our spruce timber sujipiy, a vi'iy valuable Wood which ranks ne.it to that of pine in the amount of consumption, and enters into Competition with the lower grades of that product to a very considerable extent. The supply of this timber this side of Itritish t^ilumliia available to us ii confined ehiefly to the valley of the St. Lawrence below Montr<.al, the I'.astern Townships, Nova Scotia and New llrunswick. The Eastern Townships have been run over to a large e.\tent for both local consumption and foreign demand. Kvery stream in it has Ijcen lan- sacked for the saw mills in the interior, on the river, and at )iKil sums ; and I will venture to say that there are not 300 acres (jf limber which the lumberman uf New lirunswick arr- now reck- lessly throwing away but what would be worth as much in a few years lime if left \m touched. "The ([uesliim will no doulit be asked if I have any remedy to suggest for this ruinous stale of things? I would reply, our Government, having wastefully sacrificed the timber of the countrv by throwing it on the market, by auction, and making presents of it to favorites, llicre is none now left except a tew blocks of but little timber value, which this Province took back from the [•t.ailway jirojectors. who instead received money consideration .as assistance to build tlieir roads, and it is now too late to think of its preservation to any 36 APPENDIX. 1 ! iP I , i i'! II i',: appreciable extent. One thinp;, however, Ontario at once and Quebec In two years can do, and that is, ]jut a stoj) to the ^cttini,' out of square tiinl)erin the woods, whicli not only occasions the loss of one ([uaiter of the most valuable portion of the tree, hut the greater destruction arising from cutting ly of our tutuie wants, appears to be yet tlujught of, and, even if it was at once commenced, the country would be tulally stripped of its present stock of timlier long l)efoie those plantations would be able to afford any appreciable siqiply of even the .soltesl anil most valueless dcscri)jlion of wood. And now if, in adilition to the courst- I have jiointed out, of saving even to that e.Ntent our scanty stock, any intormation given in this exposition of the siq>ply question should have the eflect of inducing our licen.se holders and lundiermeii to husband their resources and not throw them away, as has liitlierto been too nnich the case, I diall feel that my labor in that respect has been of some service to them and the country, " I have now given the only course left us for eking out the time of the total exhaustion of our forest ; and when that time is reached — when, instead of our receiving twenty-live millions of dollars annually fiom our forest, we will h<: recjuired to .send double that amount out of the country for supplies, I will not venture to e.xpress an ji.inion of its effects on our industries, but will merely lemark that it would he well for every business m.an to lie pre- pareil to, as our neighbors across the line exj'res^ively ])hrase it, ' stand from under,'" JAMES i.rrTLi:. Mom REAL, July 1st, 187(5. NiiTR. — White pine in C:inaU' and one men, upon JlCStS from market such portion of our timber territory ns remained unsold, keeping ofT, ns long as posaible, tlie terrible calamity of a timlwr famine in the country, but without effect. On the contrary, the tlovernments of both Ontario and <,)uelx;c, tl rou^h their Crown Timlier officials, who are jjenerally lawyers, and consequently totally ignorrint of the duties they are appointed to administer, have been doint; all in their power to hasten the stripping of the country of its invaluable timber resources, by throwint; them on the market, year after year, without any reference whatever to the renuirements of the trade, and tins reprehen- sible course has been the means of stimulating production to such an extent, by bringing new operators into the field, that the foreign markets have lieen constantly .glutted, the manii- liiclurcr, for several years prior to 1880, not realizing the cost of production. Instead of being obliged, as they should have been, to cut the tmiber clean out of a place, the lumberers were all along allowed to run over tlieir limits and cull out the l)est trees, out of which one or two logs, as the case right !«, that would saw out clear lunilier, were taken out of each, while the greater part was left to rot in the woods, or furnish fuel to burn up the remaining timl)ei, anti tliuv the most shameful waste anil destruction were pernntted to run riot. The oflicials at the liead of tin Cro\vn I'indier l)e]iartmint, in Uilh I'lovinces, gave tiiemselves no further trouble in the matter than that of collecting all the dues they ciiuld, their chief object ajipeanng to Ije to show which party official, lor the time l>eing. could make the largest exhibit in his budget speech; while timlier, of a^ much value — if standing to-day in the forest — as would |)ay off oui national debt, has been lost to the country. ' Then after showing tlic enormous value and varied purposes to which tlie products of tlie forest were ]nit, as exhil)ited h)- the U. -S. Census Report of 1S70, he said : — "Now, when we add fil'ty jiercent. tothe foregoing exhibit of the jiartiaj uses of wood and its value at the jjresent time, can we, with the utmost stretch of imagination, conceive the consei|uence:-i to the community when the supplies for those industries alou'-, with their vast yearly increasing re<|uirements, are cut off? The ternbloness of the calamity cannot be grasped by the mmd, and will only be realized when a dearth oltimlx-r takes places — a calamity which, in a comparative degree, we must share with our neighbors across tlv line, and although it is certain to reach us in a few short years, not the slightest thought has been given to the subject by those having control of our affairs — whether of one political party or the other— and our lumbermen are now in the woods, with double force, slashing away as if timber were soiric no.\ious product which it was necessary to extirpate and rid the country of as rapidly as possible. But when we consider that it takes a century to grow a standard pine saw-log, and l!ie U.S. experts who were emjiloyed to e.stimati- pine timlrer in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, which contain all they have from here to the Kocky Minintains, gives them a supply but for one-tenth part of that time, and, when we lake into account that a million and a half of consumers will be yearly added to the population, their whole stock will l)e swept away before their plantations afford timber for a hoe handle. " I have wati'hed tin; course pursued by the lundjerors of 1 10th the United States and Canada, and it has been, reckless in the extreme. A Mr. Ward, of Michigan, is the only one among them who, it appears, is able to take a cotnmon-.sense view of the ([iiestion of supply and demand. While others have been slaughtering away their timber and labouring hard to get rid of it, as if of no value, lie has been quietly ])icking uj) the mo>t va!uable lots, and h.as now, I am informed, secured in Michigan, Wiscon-inand Minncota, some 2.5cx),or<:>.c)oo feet. And tliis he has been able to secure at a comparatively insignificant outlay and with but little trouble or anxiety to him.self This amount of good wliiio pine timber would he worth in Michigan to day mote than ,$20,000,000. j'iniber. which could be hought at that time in Michigan at from .$2 to $j;, or e\tn less, per thousand feet, is now worth fr(;m $8 to .$10 per thousand on the stunii). " The Western papers state that a too acre lot of pine was recently sold in Western Ontario for $22,000, or as much as would purchase half a-dozen farms with iheir buildings and iniijrovenienls in the same neighborhood ; and near (/iielpli. where pine timber on a farm lot was looked ujjon a few years ago as an eyesore, ;t>l.'K!o were recently refused lor ten trees, which would not occupy half .an acre of ground. '' Our lumberers might surely learn a lesson from those facts, It is evident that the owner of limber land, who sal quietly by without lifting an axe, has been making more money "V 38 APPENDIX. h i i-i 1 .1 M , III than if he had been at work in the most productive jjold mine. His bonanza is secured, and ho will be able to realize its full value in the near future, when, from the falling off of sup- plies from the West, our lumberers v/iU Ix? called on to furnish the consumption of both white pine and spruce lumber for New York and tlie Eastern States, recpirinfj- them to double their ])re.'.ent manufacturingcapacity, and enabling tht-m to fi.'c both terms and price." JAMES LITTLE. It is only iJio])er to stale, and I do so with the greatest pleasure, tiial since the foregoing article was written, we had in this Province (Quebec) fur a nmnber of years, as Crown Lands Commissioner, a gentleman (a law- yer too), the Honoral)le now Mr. Justice W. W. Lynch, who, possessing the intelligence to fully recognize the true conditions, and aided by that ever- zealous advocate of all beneficial reforms, the Hon. H. G. Joly de Lot- biniere, iuduceed the Government of the day to set apart, as a permanent " forest reserve, " a large area of otherwise worthless territory on tlie liead- waters of our great rivers, the Ottawa and .St. Maurice ; and it is to be iioped that our people will have sufficient intelligence not to disturb this truly valuable provision by infringing thereon in any way, for it will not lake long to satisfy even the most sceptical of the very great value of a '' forest reserve." EXTRACT.S FROM RETORT ON I'HE FORESTS OF CANADA BY THE HON. H.G. JOLY df. LOTBINIERE, QUEJiEC, 1878. In this report we find, imder the heading " State of the Forests," among other remarks made, the following: — " They ^Ihe forests) contain,'' says Mr. Joly, " a great v.ariety of timber, but 1 vvill call your attention principally to the i'iiie and .Spruce, as they form nearly all our export to Europe, and are really the produce of our forest ; while the hardwood we export, es])ecially the fine Oak, nearly all comes at present from the Lake regions <:if the United States, as we have very little of our own left. " For st)me years past," continues Mr. Joly, " the idea has been gaining ground among men who take an interest in the future of the country, that our great I'nie and Spruce forests are getting rapidly exhausted, and that before long a trade which enables us to exixnt annually over twenty million dollars worth, of tinil)er will shrink down to wofully reduced proportions. " 'I'hinking men have begun to sound the note of alarm, and we owe it to them, but espe- cially to ourselves as a nation, to try and find out how far their previsions are likely t<> prove true." Then, after showing what dii'ticulty the inquiry luesents, he says : — " Let us now try .and make an inventory of the tiinl)er resources of the Dominion, befjin- ning in the west. On the Paciiic shores of the Dominion, in liritish Colundiia, the boun- tiful gifts of Providence are still stored up for us, and the forests have scarcely been attacked by the lumberman . 1 low long these Measures will last us, and what advatilnges we shall derive from them, dejicnds in agre.it nieasure upon ourselves. " From the Rocky Mountains to the Province <>f Ontario tliere are scattered here and there certain tracks of well timbered land, but they .ue the exception. That timb-r will be rec|uired for the local wants of the people who are now only iKginnii'.g to seltli on our fertile ijrairies." It is now known that this prairie country will require thousands of mil lions of feet in excess of its own slock! 'J"he report goes on to .say : — " 'I'he great forest of Canada, f'nr eMclUiuf, is spread over that vast territory watered by the Ottawa, the St. Maui ice, the Saguenay and their tributaries, over one hundred thousand si|uare miles in extent ; lK.'lore drawing your attention more particularly to it, I will mention our remaining timber limits, that cannot compare with it either (or size or lesources. They are louiul in the Oeorgian liay country \ the Muskoka aim Nipissing regions ; the Eastern Townships of QuelKic and south shore "ftlie St. LawreiiL-. . to the (lulf ; the region on the APPENDIX, 39 north shore uf the St. Lawn nee, I'roin the Saguenay ilovvti to the Bersimis, and, perliaps, still lower down, as far as Mingan ; and the country watered by the St. John, the Mirami- chi, the Kcstigouche and their tributaries;. Those limits in many places are scattered and isolatei. ht to expect. There .still remains to us a great deal of Spruce and second-rate Pine ivhich, for geneiations to come, will be in excess of our local wants, if we are careful ; but the really fine Pine, requiied so keep uj) our great timber export trade to its present stantlard, is getting very scarce and inaccessible, and I fear we must prejiare for a sudden and considerable falling off. "' While every one admits the great value of the timber trade to Canada^ no one would complain in a new and scarcely jjcopled country like ours, if the linest Pine forests were to disappear and make room for line farms, but, unfortunately, we caim(.)t comfort our- selves with such hope, for the soil of the I'inc region is not generally favourable to agri- culture, and when tlie Pine disappears the farm does not very often take itsjdace. " Men are the same all over the world. They never set much value upon the free gifts of Providence, and disregartit. ■' ll !«: bad L'liouj,'!) that so nnicli money shnuKl Ix; wasted away in ciUting down tinilier fo' no good i Ijut if tlicre were an ine.xliauslihle siipjjly nl limber on the C rown lands, the (lovemment. receiving a larger amount oftiniber dues than it niigiit otherwise, would not be likely lu interfere to protect the lunibernian against himself. Hut our foiests are getting rapidly exhausted and tlieir produce sacrificed, and it is a loss foi Canada and for the lumbermen. •'Of course the first result of a decrease in the ptroduction of timber, in so fiir as the Government is concerned, would be a corresponding decrease in the (.rown lands receipt> I won't call It the revenue, because there is .something decejitive in the use of that word. We are apt to fancy that it alwavs means (as Worcester has it) the income or .innunl profit received from lands or other property. It is nothing of the kind in this case. We iiave not been Sjiending the income or annual profits of our forests, but the forests themselves ; not the interest, but the captial. ' DR. ROBERT BEL./S REPORT. The fact of the pine region of Canada ueing only limited is r.le.^iiy .- 1/ sai-A 1 : 'mv,. but little of any kind left; and at the present time they are sawing up all kind-' of •inil)ei,a.Kl are compelled to purchase largely Ironi Michigan and C'aiiada to supplen-ei. . ■. .iinosi exhausted stock." Then after ref'-i "irg 10 die forests of the .Southern States possessing pitch •pine ai ' rynress— ".•>:;: valuable woods — and containing Init little white /iiie, ail si -e ♦h- : '.i?ck was steadily undergoing depletion, both forborne coi.ii.nipi'on ai,-' > ■ Dort of these tiinbers and hardwoods, there ■could have been biii liule ^ -■ d' .pose of for any great length of time : — " To the west and north-west of the Rocky Mountains, there are Texas (Western), New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Dakota, Eastern Montana, Illinois, Iowa, most of Missouri, that part of Minnesota west of the Mississippi, and the southern part of Wisconsin, all chielly prairie and an almost treeless territory. "On the Pacific siile there are Washington and Oregon, whicli alone have timber to spare, .nnd which they are distributing to the south along the whole western coast of North and South America. The remaining States of California and Nevada having only about one-fifth part timber, or an amount hardly sullicient for their own requirements. '' As reganls ihe Domiuion of Canada, which is supposed by some to be one endless, unbroken forest, it has (when we consider its great area) but a small proportion of forest of any kind. tJritish Columbia, on the Pacific side, which is at present lieyond our reach, may have limber to spare. 'I'hen there is the Saskatchewan V'alley, with an extent of country, principally prairie, large enough, it is said, to make thirteen States the si/.e of the Stale of New ^■ork. Next couie.i the Red River country and Manitoba, without timber to .any extent. Then the rocky, almost listrict north of Lakes Huron and Superior. Here we reach the present Province of Ontario, formerly Canada West or Upper Canada. This was truly a magnihccnl forest country, probalily unsurpassed on the face of the globe in the finest pine, 0.1k, elm, ash, walnut, .and whilewood ; but the most of this timber was burnt olT to clear the land for farms, or used for fuel, buildings and fences, and a large amount of that remaini.Tg lias been otherwise used uji or exjiorted ; so that to-day the oak, ash, elm. w.ilnut, anil uhitewood are about gone; the oak, which now leaves Quebec, is principally from Michigan or Ohio : the walnut and whilewood you get from Indiana, Ohio, -or some Western State. This pine would have been burnt off, too, in the same way as most of the other timber, but for the difliculty in clearing this land, owing to the number of trees and the greater amount of limber to be got rid ot. "This Province of Ontario is at present using up a large amnunt of jiine timber in its own internal improvements; and, excepting, perhaps, that part of its pine bordering on the •Ottawa and its tributaries, it would be acting only prudently by retaining every remaining stick for its own u.se. " Jn the Province of (Quebec, on the banks of tlie Ottawa and St. M.aurice rivers and their tributaries, lies nearly the whole wealth of white pine timber to spare in the L>omiiuon of Canada, east of the Rocky Mountains "The spruce district is confined chietly to the Lower St. I.awience, the St. Francis •district, or Eastern Townshiiis, and the Provinces of New lirunswick and Nova Scotia; ■and when it is .seen these ]nnc and ipruce sections have been worked over for years, both APPENDIX. 43 for home crmsmnption and expert, many of them the gvcatcr part of a century, we need not be surprised, when advised l>y tliose wlio profess to be well informed on tlie subject, that the white pine yet remaininj^ in the Provinces of Ontario, <^>uel>ec. New lirunswicU, and Nova Scotia would not afford a full sujiply of timber to the Unito'l Stales alone for a period of three years." WILLIAM Ll'ITLE. LoMioN, Match 30. 1874. 1 inscri an cditor-ial article, adv-trting to the subject, from the latest issue (May 28) of Garden and Forest (New York), a very valuable journal con- ducted by rrofessor Charles S. Sargent, Harvard L''niversity, S]iecial Agent, United State^> Census, 18S0, above mentioned, as corroborative of the views I hold on this momentous (jueslion ; — • " In a recent communication on the proposeil chancres in our tariff on lumber matie to the CanadiiiH Joiiinal of Commetcv, Mr, William Little, of Montreal, one of the best in- formed hnnlier-men of America, discusses the present condition of the standing jiiiie in the States of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, once the chief source of the pine sup|)ly of the United States, and reaches the conclusion that the {jreat White Pine-forests of this country have vanished practically for all conmiercial ])urposes. He takes, as an illustration af his position, the I'ine-forcsts of the lower penmsula of Michi;^ m, in which it was estimated by the officers of tlie United States Census that there were standing in iSSo 29,000,000,000 feet of merchantable White Tine. In 18S9 the editor of the Chka^o Timhcnnan made an investigation of the merchantable pine standing in the same region, and found only 3,000, 000,000 feet. Some of this was cm last winter, so that, if these ligures are correct, there is not now pine enough in the lower peninsula to supply the saw-mills of the State for more than six months. It siiould be remembered, however, as Afr. Little points out, that there are still left gleanings from third or fourth cut burnt-over stump-lands, wliicli produce grades of lumber of very inferior •piality, some Red I'ine and some inferior Hemlock, which may keep the mills running foi- a short time. •' Mr. Little then assumes that it is fair to suppose that the '.'ensus e.stimates of pine staiuling in Minnesota, Wisconsin and the upjier peninsula ^I'l! Michigan were as nearly correct as experience has shown those of the lower .Michigan penin-.ula to have lieen, and, taknig the Uen^us figures of 55,170,000,000, and deducting the amtjunt which has been cut during the last ten years, 37,451, .14', 33^ feel — the figures recently jirepared by the jV->rlk- •tVcstt'nt /.iiinyrindii — he finds only about 20,000,000,000 feet standing in the three States, from which must be deducted the cut of last winter, rather more than 8,000,000,000, leaving a little over two years' sup|)ly of standing pine in the wiiole of the North- West. " Correct estimates of standing tinilK'r are exceedingly difficult to make and to verify, but by a system of averages extending over very large areas, comp."ratively accurate results can be obtained, and it is not probable that the ligures given above % any very far from the truth. riiey are not needed, however, to jirove that the time is at hand when the North Western .States will cease to be great lundjer producers. Thi> is abundantly shown by the fact that tile most intelligent lumbermen of thai region have for.siveral years been engaged in securing great bodies of Pine-timber in the Southern States, and of Spruce and Redwood on the Pacific coast. 'Lhe increased number of destructive fires in saw-mills all through the North-Western States, which have been noticed during the last two 'ir tlu'ce years, is another infallible .-ign that their business is approaching the end. •• There is no hope tha! these great forests, which have been wasted as forests have never been wasted before, will ever be reproduced. Their end finishes the prosperity of a large section of the country, aivl iirarks a perioi of folly and extrav.igance which seems, as we look back on it, ^impl) iiicredilile. .And yet these forests, if they had not Ix-'en called upon to yield annually more than their natural yearly increase, and if they had n it been wa.-.ted, might have been productive forever, and insured permanent wealth and jirosperity where ruin now stares the community ni the face. National calamities like the extermination of our Pine-forests are slow in making them.selves felt, and the closing of a saw mill and the ;uin and abandonment of a town have, at first ]ierhaps, only local significance. In the end, however, the country wakes up to the fact that a few men have made themselves enor- mously rich, and that nothing is left but blackened stumps and barren soil to show where once forests existed ; and that one of the princijjal sources t)f national wealth has gone forever And yet tor ten years the .-Vmerican |ieople, fairly warned of what wa.s coining, have sat quietly by and looked with b.arely a word of protest .against the extermina- tion of the forests in every part of the country. " 'W u PERIODICALS PUBLISHED BY FELIX ALCAN io8 Boulevard Haint-Oernnaln, PARIS. Revue Historique. Edited by M. (}. MoNOD, Lecturer at the h'cuU Aormalt Sujitrieure, Adjunct Director af the Ecole dm Hiiutei Eiudea, 15th Year, 1890. The " Roviie Historique" appears bl-nionthly, making iit the ond of the year three Tohimes of .lOO pagi'S each. Kach numlier lOTitalns: I. SfiVPr»l IcaflliiK nrtldes, including, If pofslMe, a coraplfite tlieslB. II. .Miscelliiiiic.'i, coiupOHcd of iinputilishi>il documeiils, short notices on curious histor- ical pointH, III. Historical reports, liirnisliiiitr inforinalion, a."! complete as possible, tmiching the progress of historical studios. 1\'. An iwialysis of periodicals of 1- ranee and forcijin countries from the standpoint of liisioricai •iludios. V, Critical reports of new historical works. Ity oriKiiial ru(Mn>ir» in each nuinher, signed with the names of authorities in the .science, and by reports, accounts, chronicles and analysis of periodicals, thi.i review furnishes Information regardint; the historical iiiovi'inent a« cotnplute as Is U> ho found in any similar review. Earlier series are sold separately for M trs., single nnniher for 6 frs., numhers of the first year are sold for !» frs. Price of subscription, in I'oslal Union, .'a frs. Annales de I'Ecole Libre des Science Politiques. PvtilUluid tri-monlUly li>i thr, OynperalUin n'' I'rnfexttirs imd Former i^pilH oj Ike College. 5th Year, 1890. Committee of publication : MM. Uhut.my, Director lif the (Allege; Liiox Sav, Member of the Acad'Jniie Franyaise, formerly .Minisleiof I'iaance ; A. dk I'ovm.i.e, I'rolessor at the Couservaiory of Aritand Trades. Chief of the Hureaii of Stausties in ihc Ministry of Finance, (Treasury Depart meiit) ; I(. .Sioi;km, funnerly Ins|iector of ilie Finances and .Administrator of Indirect Taxes; Ai'ii, AiiwrNK; .V. IliiMT, Deputy; (!,viinii:i, Ai.ix; 1.. Hknai!i,i, i'rolessor at the I.aw C.)llei,'' of I'ari-.; A.ViiKK f,Ki)ijN. i;hief of the Cabinet of t lie President of the -^enate ; Al.Hi'-itT .'^OKKI. ; I'liiHONNKAU, Sibstitute Profe».sorBt the College de Paris; A. 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