CONTINUOUS FOREST PRODUCTION 23 



industry has never accepted any such standards of need in mill construc- 

 tion. Instead the forest has been destroyed by unnecessary plant 

 duplication at the same time the profits of the industry have been wiped 

 out. Dr. Fernow well describes what happened under this policy in the 

 Lake States : 



"In 1868 the golden age of lumbering had arrived in Michigan; 

 in 1871 rafts filled the Wisconsin; in 1875 Eau Claire had 30, Marathon 

 30, and Fond du Lac 20 sawmills, now all gone; and mills at LaCrosse 

 which were cutting millions of feet annually are now closed. By 1882 

 the Saginaw Valley had reached the climax of its production and the 

 lumber industry of the great Northwest, with a cut of 8 billion feet of 

 white pine alone, was in full blast. The white pine production reached its 

 maximum in 1890 with S}/^ billion feet, then to decrease gradually but 

 steadily to half that cut in 1908. "^ 



What is the result today? A recent report of the Wisconsin Agri- 

 cultxiral College^ states that Wisconsin has 10,000,000 acres of cut over 

 lands of which three-fourths may be agricultural. Only 50,000 acres 

 is being cleared annually. A 150 years' job at the present rate ! This 

 shows conclusively that whether the land once occupied by forest is 

 agricultural or not, there would have been time to raise from 1 to 3 more 

 forest crops before agriculture could take possession. In fact, agri- 

 oilture would have taken possession much faster if its natural markets 

 had not been destroyed by destruction of the forest. The care of this 

 forest area and continuous utilization of the product would have kept 

 an enormous number of workers and their hangers-on continuously 

 present in close proximity to the agricultural land. This creates the 

 best of all markets where the producer deals directly or almost directly 

 with the consumer without the intervention of the transportation com- 

 pany and too many middle men. li7}/2 million of these acres had been 

 kept in forest, even the low average growth of 300 feet b. m. per acre 

 would have produced 2i<4 billion feet of limiber annually. It is said 

 in the Pacific Northwest that every 1,000 feet of timber taken from 

 the forest involves the payment of $8 for wages and supplies. If a like 

 ratio applies in Wisconsin the annual product mentioned would have 

 involved the annual payment of $18,000,000 for these purposes. Much 

 of this would have gone to the settler for food products and even- 

 tually furnished the land clearing fund which must now be painfully 



' Fernow's History of Forestry, p. 472. 



•Report on land clearing demonstration trains conducted through northern 

 Wisconsin in May, June, and August, by Wisconsin College of Agriculture. 



