WHAT MINNESOTA SHOULD DO IN FORESTRY. 287 



WHAT MINNESOTA SHOULD DO IN FORESTRY. 



GEN. C. C. ANDREWS, CHIEF FOREST FIRE WARDEN, ST. PAUL. 



Minnesota is a natural pine bearing state. The utilization of 

 forest products has for fifty years been a leading industry. Some 

 pine will always be cut in our state, but the remaining original pine 

 will mostly be cut within the next ten or fifteen years. After that 

 it will be a long interval before 15,000 workmen will be employed 

 as now, each winter, in our northern pineries. We should no longer 

 delay the work of forest regeneration. 



Remember that besides dollars and cents the forest yields many 

 indirect benefits which concern the whole public. To the farmer's 



I,AKE I.A SAI,I,E, IN THE PINE REGION OF MINNESOTA. 



field it is a barrier against the cold north wind and the hot south 

 wind. It is a natural reservoir of moisture maintaining water flow 

 in streams. It beautifies landscape, ameliorates climate, enriches 

 soil, afifords covert for game. 



The great economic fact in forestry is that pine forest is a profit- 

 able crop on non-agricultural land, land that is too hilly, too rocky 

 or too sandy for cultivation. On such land the pine will, by its 

 annual growth, earn on an average net annual interest at the rate 

 of three per cent on capital properly invested ; but as it takes 

 about eighty years for pine on such soil to reach merchantable size 



