1 84 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



various grades are as yet purely arbitrary, they tend to encourage the 

 holding of the better trees for the higher prices. Eventually these 

 prices must be based on the factors which go to produce these better 

 grades, such as the added length of time, the labor expended in silvi- 

 cnltural operations, etc. 



At all conservation meetings the cry is common among lumbermen 

 that prices do not yet warrant the practise of forestry. That this is still 

 true in the remoter regions is indisputable ; yet the lumbermen should 

 remember that they have only themselves to blame for the condition, 

 since they have always pushed out into new fields faster than the lumber 

 prices warranted. The public is little concerned whether or not a man 

 can practise forest ry profitably in one section of the country, if it is 

 known that he can do so in the more accessible regions. The national 

 production of lumber brings up a very nice question. It is well known 

 among lumbermen that a slight overproduction results in a considerable 

 drop in prices ; which is, of course, fatal to the forestry cause. Yet we 

 have the popular demand for cheap lumber and the strenuous opposi- 

 tion on the part of the government to any kind of an agreement among 

 lumbermen to limit the output. In the same way the popular feeling is 

 to-day undoubtedly in favor of no tariff on lumber on the ground that 

 more Canadian lumber will be imported, and that our lumbermen will 

 not be obliged to cut so much. As a matter of fact Germany and 

 other countries, which have paid attention to the growing of timber, have 

 a tariff on lumber to protect their growers from countries like our own, 

 which are wholly exploiters of timber, although at the same time a 

 great amount of lumber is imported by their manufacturers. It should 

 be the duty of some federal commission, possibly the Interstate Trade 

 Commission now under discussion, to try to arrive at a compromise be- 

 tween producers and consumers, whereby the annual output would be 

 sufficiently limited to eliminate waste and maintain prices high enough 

 to warrant the practise of forestry ; and, on the other hand, to protect 

 the consumers against monopolistic prices. 



Ill 



Bonded indebtedness for railroad construction has been the bane of 

 many a New England town. In the days when the United States 

 government was subsidizing the railroads of the west, the farm towns of 

 New England were raising every possible dollar to build their own rail- 

 roads in the forlorn hope that in tins way they could meet the compe- 

 tition with the fertile lands which a misguided government was giving 

 away in the west. Voting year after year for unneeded protect'on 

 against foreign nations, these farm peoples Avere betrayed by the poli- 

 ticians into a far more disastrous competition with cheap lands in the 

 west, which no established community, with accompanying high values, 



