FoBBBT Culture. 91 



still supposed by the thoughtless majorit}'^ to be inexhaustible. 

 How far from inexhaustible a few facts and estinoates will indi- 

 cate. In 1878 a detailed statement was read before the Chicago 

 Board of Trade, to the effect that at the present rate the timber 

 supply of Canada would not last more than ten or twelve years, 

 for the more important kinds. This estimate attracted consider- 

 able notice and some criticism. The Lumbermen's Gazette, of Bay 

 City, Michigan, published estimates that same year, showing that 

 the pineries of the United States and Canada would stand the 

 drain then existing for twenty years. In 1875, Hon. George B. 

 Emerson, one of the highest authorities on forestry in the United 

 States, estimated " that in fifteen years all the forests in America 

 will be cut down." These prophecies are startling, but they are 

 made independently, by practical lumbermen, by men of great 

 scientific attainment, and by government officials. 



Moreover, consider some of the factors of the problem. The 

 census of 1870 showed that the annual products drawn by the 

 people of the United States from their forests then amounted in 

 value to $1,000,000,000 ; eight times the interest on the national 

 debt, twelve times the annual gold and silver product, and four 

 times the annual wheat product. The consumption of lumber, of 

 all kinds, exceeded 20,000,000,000 feet, expressed in board meas- 

 ure. But figures like these give little idea of the facts they en- 

 deavor to represent. Besides, these figures express only the net 

 product of the lumberman's direct assault upon the forests with axe 

 and saw, and do not take into account the enormous waste in- 

 volved in his operations, nor the awful devastations caused by 

 forest fires, cyclones and the like. Added to all this, we must 

 imagine, if we can, the grand total of the immense clearings made 

 for farming purposes, most of the products of which never get to 

 market. Some idea of what has been done in this way may be 

 gained from the interesting estimate made by Fredrick Starr, of 

 St Louis, that from 1850 to 1860 the wood land cleared for agri- 

 cultural purposes averaged ten thousand acres for every working 

 day. At this rate, the axe of the solitary pioneer alone would 

 " clear " the whole United States in abput one hundred years 

 from the present time. 



