NEEDED FORESTRY LEGISLATION. 429 



for paper pulp. Estimates have been made at the university to 

 show that by planting this spruce in small beds, if the spruce is 

 properly planted and cared for it will yield from forty to sixty 

 cords of wood per acre in thirty to thirty-five years. That 

 spruce pulp is worth at the mills about $7.00 per cord in this 

 state. You see, regardless of what has been said on this point, 

 that this land is of very little value for agricultural purposes at 

 this time. Let me tell you the facts. On that particular land 

 on which this tract is situated there were twelve families who 

 moved out. Why did they move out? Because they could not 

 make a living there as easily as somewhere else, and they had 

 gone out on the prairie. This land some day may be better 

 fitted for agriculture than for forestry, but today that is not the 

 case. I understand this autumn a large number of people moved 

 away from there. 



We have a man in charge of this little reserve, especially of 

 the nursery. He is a Dane, and he had a little something to do 

 with forestry in the old country. He is quite a reliable man. 

 He was married some sixteen years ago, and he told me this fall 

 he is going to move out of the country in case things are going 

 to change again so he would be six miles from his nearest 

 neighbor, as he was when he first moved in there. If that does 

 not show that the country was over-boomed, I would like to 

 know what it does show. These are facts, and if you want to 

 know the town, range and quarter section, I can give them to 

 you. The state ought to provide means for planting out these 

 seedlings and for carrying out that experiment. There are lots 

 of people in this state, lots of people in the country, that have 

 a general idea that forestry would be a good thing in a general 

 way, but when it comes down to doing something specific they 

 do not know what to do, although they want to do something. 

 If it were possibly practicable to take the legislature up there 

 and show them the conditions as they exist, they would un- 

 doubtedly take hold of the matter and make it a success. But 

 very few members of the legislature and not half of the people 

 in the state know anything of the conditions in the timber sec- 

 tion of the state, and it is a difficult matter to make the legisla- 

 ture appreciate this as they ought. It seems to me this is a 

 great sort of wealth that we ought not to allow to slip away 

 from us. 



There is another matter that is very dear to me, and I think 



