248 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



Mr. Kirby is quoted as saying, in part: 



"You will be here long after the rest of us have junked our mills and have 

 gone into, other employment, but you will not be here forever. . . . Just a 

 short time ago . . . from St. Louis to Maine was one vast forest. The for- 

 ests of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota were regarded as inexhaustible 

 . . . yet ... all that country is producing only a straggling little bit of 

 timber. . . . Those wonderful forests are on their last legs, a few fringes left. 



"There is not a tract of forest of any size in all the South today that is not 

 owned by some operator or held for operating. Fifteen years ago outside inves- 

 tors . . . owned practically all of the southern forests . . . but about fifteen 

 years ago the lumbermen of the South suddenly awakened to the knowledge that 

 their forests were rapidly disappearing. They began to investigate, and when 

 they did, they saw the limit of the forests and they rushed into the market and 

 bought up all that was left ; so that today, in the South, you have only a fringe 

 of forest. . Here and ther^ a little. 



"Of the 362 sawmills in Texas, 202 answered a questionnaire asking as to the 

 quantity of timber owned. Of the 202 mills making reply, 90 per cent had shorter 

 life than five years; so that if you men here have the idea that your industry is 

 going to be permanent, get it out of your mind. . . . All intermediate terri- 

 tory, everything between Illinois and the Atlantic, all the world, substantially, 

 has got to be supplied from the Pacific coast in a little while. . . . 



"You are going to have a profitable business, and within five years you will 

 havehave substantially no competition, save local competition among yourselves. 



"I am pointing to this to lead you to a certain thought. You think, perhaps, 

 that your stumpage is high. . . . Within the period of my life, ... in east- 

 ern Texas, my father traded 320 acres of yellow pine for a sewing-machine. 



"Under these circumstances, why don't you get behind the National Associa- 

 tion? You owe it to yourself to put your industry on a high plane and get to- 

 gether for the good of every one. You owe it to your country . . . your sec- 

 tion, to the men you employ ... to yourself, to your neighbor, to your coun- 

 try, and your God, to think and act in a big way. . . . You are asked to ex- 

 tend a little more generous assistance to the National. In fact, to double your 

 contribution ... I ask for this support. For every five cents invested you 

 will get back a dollar" {Ltimbcr Trade Journal, August 15, 1918, page 22,). 



Further and confirmatory evidence as to the southern pine situation 

 was given by J. E. Rhodes, Secretary and Manager of the Southern 

 Pine Association, before a meeting of southern foresters at Jackson- 

 ville, Fla., on January 3. He is quoted as saying: 



"In five to eight years at least 3,000 sawmills in the South will be cut out, and 

 at the present rate of cut, the annual production will drop from around eight 

 billion feet to three or five billion feet" {Lumber Trade Journal, January 15, 

 page 19). 



"Trade Extension' is the term currently preferred to "advertising" 

 or "exploitation," and the rapidity with which it increases in the lum- 

 ber industry presents a decided anomaly, with log timber supplies 



