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We are greatly indebted, therefore, to the scientists who have spent so much time in 

 investigating this subject. All thanks to the Scientists who told us where the pine tree 

 .and the walnut tree would best grow, where we could most profitably plant the maple, 

 the birch and the willow, and where the eucalyptus and the catalpa would best grow and 

 do the most good. To these men, therefore, who have laid the foundation of this great 

 work that we are just entering upon, all honor and praise are due. He expressed aston- 

 ishment at the timber wealth of Canada. He said they had done well in having a paper 

 read to them by a practical lumberman, giving a practical view of the great timber 

 wealth of this country, and also some practical hints as to how this great wealth could be 

 preserved. There were great wheat fields in the North- West ; he had visited the great 

 ■cotton plantations of the South, and the great cattle ranches of the West. But alongside 

 of wheat and cotton and cattle there stood in the forests of this country a greater mine 

 ■of wealth than the wealth of cotton, wheat and cattle combined. Why had this great 

 mine of wealth been forgotten 1 The great trouble had been hitherto that every man 

 had felt that he had a perfect right to go on to Government lands and cut his own wood 

 and do as he pleased with the lumber thereon. The law of possession had not been as 

 strictly applied to them as it had to agricultural lands. This was a great mistake ; we 

 must bring the public forest lands under the supervision of law as closely as are the farms 

 of individuals. The invasion of timber lands or forests was just as much an invasion as 

 was the ti-espass upon private property. 'The value of the lumber industry in Canada 

 had been referred to, but he would tell them, as he told an audience at a meeting in 

 Massachusetts some time ago that the products of the lumber industry alone in the United 

 States annually amounted to $250,000,000. It had grown to enormous proportions. 

 There were other industries which had grown wonderfully too. The product of the 

 leather trade in the United States to-day amounts to $150,000,000 annually, and when 

 he told the merchants and manufacturers of Massachusetts that that industry had grown 

 up within his time they were perfectly astonished. But he could remember when it took 

 a peripatetic cobbler one week to make him a pair of boots and it took him three years to 

 grow out of them. Now a man could, with the machinery of Lynn manufacture 1,200 

 pairs of shoes a day. The silk industry had also increased within the last ten years from 

 an annual product of $10,000,000 up to more than $35,000,000, and the American silk 

 to-day found a ready sale, although many ladies thought that the' sheen of the French 

 silk was a little better than the American. The United States learned to take care of 

 her silk industry just as England did after the Anglo-French treaty had expired. The 

 lumber industry in the United States amounted to $233,000,000 annually, and the 

 number of persons employed in it was about 141,000 besides about 500 children and 

 2,000 or 3,000 women, enough lo make a very respectable sized city. The amount of 

 money paid in wages to these persons for the support of their families and the education 

 of their children was nearly $36,000,000 a year. Was he wrong then, in claiming that 

 the foundation of this industry should be as sacredly protected by law as the cotton, the 

 boot and shoe, or any other industry 1 The question had passed out of the sphere of 

 individual tree planting for ornamentation, had passed out of the sphere of scientific in- 

 vestigation, and they were engaged to-day in developing, preserving and protecting 

 our forests, among other things, in the interest of our lumber industry, one of the three 

 great fundamental industries of this world. This industry was certainly entitled to some 

 consideration, and the question naturally arises what consideration was it to receive 1 In 

 the United States, as they all know, there was a great variety of Governments, why they 

 had more than 15,000 law makers in the United States, and they managed to get out of 

 them a pretty good lot of laws. They had their Congress and Legislatures and Municipal 

 organizations, all engaged in making laws, statutes and ordinances, and they could find, 

 if they were to number them, that there were nearly 15,000 of them engaged profitably 

 at it. 



He said it was pretty hard to tell what was to be done. The Federal Government 

 had no right to go into any of the States, but it had special privileges, and could set the 

 different States a good example, at any rate. One thing they wished to know, was how 

 to protect the forests from the settlers themselves, who look upon a pine tree three or 

 four feet thick with profound contempt, but who regarded a stalk of wheat a sixteenth 



