THE ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE OF FORESTRY. 313 



plish fundamental changes. It will substitute for an enterprise at 

 present aimed only at the utilization of existing resources one embrac- 

 ing also measures for the production of its own supply. There will 

 be steady and fair returns from lumbering, but spectacular opportun- 

 ities for the investment of capital will cease to exist. The industry 

 will assume normal proportions based upon the actual production of 

 our forests, and will develop soundly with the increase in yield due to 

 the improvement in conservative methods. A steady and sustained 

 output, which may be estimated closely in advance, will tend to the 

 maintenance of a constant scale of values, and to hamper speculation 

 in logs or lumber. The size of the saw-mill will be regulated by the 

 actual annual production of timber in the forest which supplies it. 

 There will be a gradual elimination of enormous milling plants, and 

 the general substitution of the saw-mill of medium size equipped for 

 permanent use and under the same control as an area of forest land 

 yielding a continued supply of timber equal to the capacity of the 

 mill itself. 



The general tendency towards wide distribution of the lumber in- 

 dustry will be an important economic feature of its development under 

 conservative methods. The present movements towards centralization 

 in the bodies of merchantable timber still remaining will cease with 

 their consumption. In turning to second growth as a source of supply, 

 the lumberman will establish himself wherever the productive capacity 

 of cut-over lands under conservative handling offers him a fair re- 

 turn for his labor. The final result will be the development in each 

 locality of a permanent class trained to forest work and a favorable 

 geographical allotment of opportunities for the wage earner. 



No man can foretell with certainty the value of timber produced 

 under the application of practical forestry, nor the sustained supply 

 which this country is capable of producing. The urgent necessity for 

 the general adoption of conservative methods in lumbering does not rest 

 upon the solution of these questions, but upon the established fact that 

 the present value and the growing scarcity of timber render it profitable 

 to foster the production of a second crop upon cut-over lands. It is 

 to be remembered, also, that the results of forestry follow certainly but 

 gradually. Its immediate adoption throughout the country would 

 serve to shorten the period of decline which is the price the lumber 

 industry must pay for phenomenal but unsound development, but the 

 trees must have time to grow again. The new policy firmly established, 

 the productive capacity of our forests fully utilized, it is believed 

 and the statement is amply sustained by the record of other countries 

 with a proportionately smaller wooded area and a proportionately equal 

 consumption of forest products that neither will the value of timber 



