502 Forestry Quarterly 



it comprises hardly one quarter of the total amount of timber in 

 the province. 



If it be wise policy to promote what may be called the indi- 

 genous industries, then the natural conditions of this province 

 indicate that the main effort of its people should be to foster and 

 develop the lumbering, mining and fishing industries, just as in 

 the Prairie provinces the natural conditions indicate a primarily 

 agricultural development. It seems evident, also, that any and 

 every effort devoted to the promotion of those chief industries 

 will at the same time constitute the truest and most effective 

 aid to agriculture, the development of which over most of 

 British Columbia is very largely dependent on local markets 

 and on opportunities for remunerative outside employment for 

 the farmer until he has cleared and improved sufficient land to 

 support him. 



Of all the main industries, lumbering is and will be the most 

 valuable. It will be conducted over a larger portion of the 

 province than any other industry. It provides a market for the 

 produce of the settler, and gives him employment in his spare 

 time. It attracts and forms a class of men hardy, independent 

 and resourceful. It produces and distributes greater community 

 wealth than any other industry. Seventy-five to 90 per cent of 

 the lumberman's dollar stays in the community in the form of 

 wages, supplies and transportation expenses, and everybody 

 shares it. 



According to the census of 1911 the lumber industry, as com- 

 pared with the other industries of the province, had over half 

 the total capital investment, employed over half the wage earners, 

 paid over half the wages, and produced nearly half the total 

 value of all the products of all the industries. 



The present depression and excess mill capacity in the lumber 

 industry is in part due to the general business depression and in 

 part to putting too much dependence on one market. During 

 the recent period of very rapid expansion of settlement and 

 town building the home market in British Columbia and the 

 Prairie provinces absorbed in increasing quantities the bulk of 

 the output of the mills, both interior and coast. To meet this 

 demand new mills were built. The total mill capacity always 

 kept several laps ahead of the demand, even at its best, because 

 most of them were built extra large in anticipation of a still 

 greater business. Meanwhile, the foreign export trade, never 



