TEE WEALTH OF TEE COMMONWEALTH 169 



The salt of Michigan, if the present rate of production of two billion 

 pounds a year is not too greatly exceeded, might probably last some 

 two million years. Yet the consumption will increase — we know not 

 how much, and a much less time and amount would threaten the col- 

 lapse of Detroit beneath Lake Erie. 



They talked only a few decades ago of inexhaustible supplies of 

 iron ore, and yet now a pretty well posted man says there is in sight 

 but thirty or forty years' supply of ore — that is now merchantable, I 

 presume he means. I would double that and say that, at the present 

 rate of consumption of some 23,000,000 tons a year, there is probably 

 enough for eighty years' consumption. Still that is not a very long 

 time in the lifetime of a nation. 



One thing must be noted in regard to this matter of exhaustion. 

 It is rare that a resource supposed to be inexhaustible comes so sharply 

 and entirely to an end as the pine of the Saginaw Valley (the Ameri- 

 can Lumberman says that pine is on the toboggan), or the countless 

 herds of buffalo of the western plains, which were sharply wiped out 

 between 1877 and 18S7, so that the buffalo coats which the street car 

 men wore when I was a sub-freshman were a luxury of the rich when 

 I was graduated. Usually as the cost increases it tends to cut down 

 the consumption until a certain balance is attained depending upon 

 available substitutes, and so the price slowly rises and consumption 

 keeps on decreasing. That is the way in which our anthracite coal fields, 

 and the British coal and iron ores are now becoming exhausted; a 

 large part of our anthracite now comes from fine stuff formerly thrown 

 away. Moreover, in many cases there may be both an accumulated 

 stock and a continuous supply. For instance, it is so to a certain 

 extent with our forests. The magnificent growth the pioneers found 

 here was an accumulated stock. But in many countries forests, like 

 a farmer's wood lot here, are looked to for a continuous supply. We 

 must soon be in that case. Originally the great white pine belt ex- 

 tended over 400,000 square miles and there may have been 700 billion 

 feet of it at the beginning, say in 1851. By 1901 there was but 110 

 billion feet, which was going at the rate of seven billion feet a year. 



So within ten years there will be no more white pine — it will be 

 hemlock, jack pine, anything. As the annual consumption in the 

 United States is some 25 billion cubic feet, and the total forest area 

 of the United States is some 500 million acres, from which American 

 lumbering practise will only get 420 board feet a year, it is obvious 

 that even though we improve to the standard of the German practise 

 of 660 board feet per annum, we must still either reforest large areas 

 or find substitutes. It is difficult to see the national economy of rush- 

 ing through, our timber pellmell at a low price and then buying that 

 of our neighbor, Canada, at a high price. 



Besides stored up treasures of wood and coal, the loss by extermina- 



