292 



CONSERVATION 



thereby. The important question for 

 the American people is whether we be- 

 long to that class. Lying before the 

 writer is a speech made, about thirteen 

 months ago, on an important occasion 

 before an important body of men. The 

 author of the speech was one of the two 

 or three men in the United States who 

 seem, at times, to possess more political 

 power than the whole American people 

 outside of themselves. He discussed 

 the conservation of natural resources, 

 including the forests. His speech is 

 punctuated wath "Laughter," "Ap- 

 plause," "Applause and laughter," etc. 

 These expressions were called out by 

 the orator's quips and jibes at "political 

 lumbermen," "demagogic lumbermen" 

 and "men who are friends of the peo- 

 ple," and at those who, in the next- 

 twenty years, would exhaust the forests 

 of the Republic — maybe !" The whole 

 speech is interesting as an anachronism. 

 To those familiar with conservation 

 problems, it suggests, let us say, the 

 reincarnation and rehabilitation of the 

 mummy of Rameses H. After ridicul- 

 ing the idea of the possible destruction 

 of our natural resovirces, he exclaims, 

 amidst the laughter of his auditors, "I 

 am not losing any sleep !" 



As regards the distinguished orator 

 of that occasion, there appears to be lit- 

 tle ground for loss of sleep. Our coun- 

 try's resources, together with his own 

 private ones, will unrloubtedly last out 

 the span of life still remaining to him. 

 Nevertheless, to American citizens who 

 realize something of the place of Amer- 

 ica in human history, and who maintain 

 some measure of hope and ambition for 

 its future, it will be worth while to 

 look, through Mr. Willis' photographs, 

 at a nation which has actually run the 

 course we are so rapidly running, and 

 to contemplate the result. 



«^ «? 5>i 

 How It Is Done 



A SHORT time since a correspond- 

 ■^*- ent sent to Conservation a clip- 

 ping describing the final "clean-up" of 

 the old Wright & Davis contract near 



Hibbing, ^Nlinn. The writer well says : 

 "This news item gives such a vivid pic- 

 ture of the utter destruction and deso- 

 lation of the ordinary logging methods 

 that it seems to me it ought to be given 

 a place in the columns of your journal. 

 Conservation, as this recital of actual 

 conditions would, it seems to me, carry 

 greater weight with your readers than 

 many columns of preaching on the same 

 subject." 



The dispatch recites that 



To-day one of the greatest lumbering con- 

 tracts in the history of Minnesota became 

 history. The event marks the final passing 

 of one of the state's most famous timber 

 tracts, known as the old Wright & Davis con- 

 tract, drawn up more than seventeen years 

 ago between Wright & Davis, of Michigan, 

 and the Pine Tree Lumber Company of 

 Minnesota. This contract covered the right 

 to cut the timber on something like 250 

 square miles of the finest pine land in the 

 state, lying at the western end of St. Louis 

 County and reaching into Itasca' County. 



The Weyerhaeusers began logging this 

 land in i8gi. Hibbing was then not even a 

 name, and the western end of the Mesabi 

 range was unknown. There was not a white 

 settler within miles. What is now the 

 Great Northern right of way was built by 

 the first logging camps as a logging road and 

 was afterward sold to the Hill road. The 

 whole country now, except for stumps, bare 

 as a rock, was covered with great white and 

 Norway pine. 



From the vast forest preserve the Weyer- 

 haeusers have cut nearly a billion feet of 

 lumber, paying out millions of dollars in car- 

 rying on their operations. 



Not a merchantal:)le log remains standing 

 in the neighborhood. The last of the historic 

 forest, about two train loads, lies cut and 

 stacked along the tracks north of Nashwauk. 

 a little village to the west of here. When 

 these few remnants are shipped out, one of 

 the greatest lumbering tracts in the world 

 will have ceased to exist. 



The mineral rights were so'd to the Great 

 Northern Railroad and it is from tliem that 

 most of the mines of the Western Mesabi 

 have been developed. The Hull-Rust, the 

 biggest iron mine in the world, is on a part 

 of this land. It has probably yielded more 

 wealth than any similar piece of land in 

 America. 



This is but a sample of the kind of 

 work that has been in progress in the 

 United States since the beginning of 

 the lumbering era. From the stand- 

 point of the business man who has gone 



