81 



ciate in value very materially. It cannot be otherwise, as we have 

 shown that the demand will increase rapidly and the supply decrease. 

 Even now the cost and scarcity of these articles is having an oppressive 

 effect on every industry in the State. The expense of agricultural 

 implements and tools here, over their cost in the Eastern States, is 

 already operating as a serious drawback upon the thrift and profit of 

 our farmers, brought in close competition, as the}'' now are, with their 

 neighbors of the Western Atlantic States. The cost of lumber for 

 budding and fencing, in most of our agricultural districts, obtained, as 

 it is, at a distance of hundreds of miles away, is even now so great that 

 our farmers are among the poorest housed people of any agricultural 

 communit}^ in the Union, where the country has been settled an equal 

 length of time. Their crops and stock are but poorly sheltered, if at 

 all, and their farms aie worse than poorly fenced. To the expense of 

 lumber, more than to any other cause, must be attributed the general 

 dilapidated appearance of our agricultural districts. Efforts to improve- 

 ment in these respects lead to a forced system of farming; too frequent 

 cropping, and little or no nursing of the land; to that sameness of pro- 

 duction which we have had cause so severely to condemn. The cost of 

 lumber and of wood is already discouraging every mechanical, every 

 manufacturing, and every commercial industry of the State, for the use 

 of these articles is in some way an important element in them all. The 

 advancement of all our towns and cities in building and improvement is 

 being even now retarded veiy much, directly and indirectly, by the cost 

 of these necessaiy articles of life. The cost of houses enhances the 

 prices of rent. The price of rent and cost of wood add materially to 

 the general expenses of living, and these in turn enhance the price of 

 labor of every kind, and consequently decrease the production and retard 

 the general prosperity and improvement of the cities and country. If 

 this be the case now, when we are so young and our population so thin, 

 when the demand for these articles is increased twenty fold and the 

 supply decreased in the same ratio, who can depict the condition of our 

 State? 



CLIMATIC EFFECTS OF THE DESTRUCTION OF FORESTS. 



We have estimated that not over one-twentieth part of the surface of 

 our State is now covered with heavy timber, and we believe we are 

 within the bounds of truth when we state that not over one-eighth 

 of the entire surface is covered with trees of any description whatever. 

 It is the opinion of the best judges, founded on historical facts, and a 

 long series of observations and experiments, that at least one-third of 

 the surface of any country should be forests. That this relation between 

 forest and cultivated land will secure the most advantageous conditions 

 of climate and the greatest amount of productions for the sustenance of 

 human and animal life. Eire has undoubtedlv been the original and 

 active cause of so great a proportion of prairie or untimbered land within 

 our borders. Being once destroyed, the consequent climatic condition 

 of the country has prevented a re-production of the original forests. 

 Nature now, unassisted by man, can never effect that re-production 

 without some great physical revolution that will change the whole face 

 and features of the country. That the nakedness of the earth's surface 

 is the cause of the extreme wet and dry seasons in our State, and partic- 

 ularly of the destructive floods to which the valle}^ are subject, can not 

 for a moment be doubted by any one at all acquainted with the laws of 

 nature and the agency of those laws in the production and modification of 



