FORESTRY. 371 



the human race, beginning slowly, increased rapidly for a time, then 

 ebbed almost back to barbarism, again flowing forward, sometimes 

 almost stationary, but always forward to the culmination of the 

 nineteenth centurj^ and the j^ear of the White City. The log cabin 

 gave place to the cottage, the cottage to the mansion and palace. 

 The step from Lobengula in his grass hut in the wilds of Africa to 

 the White House and loftj^ doine of the capitol at Washington, is a 

 long one, reaching over centuries, but it covers the story. The forest 

 trail gave place to a bridle path, the path to a road, the ford to ^ 

 bridge; the canoe and paddle gave place to the ship with sails, and 

 finally the apotheosis of progress came with the modern railway 

 and the Atlantic steamship. 



Each step upward in the human scale has made its demands upon 

 the timbered area. In all ages the husbandman has been the great 

 destroyer of the forest, and logically so. He has ever been the 

 pioneer. He must first advance into the wilderness and create a 

 demand for a town as a market center, and a demand for lines of 

 transportation. The city is born of the wants of a given territory'- 

 Primarily, the settler has cut down the forest, first, to make a shel- 

 ter for himself and family and his various belongings, and, sec- 

 ondarily, to make room for fields and pastures. Incidentallj^ some 

 portion of the fallen timber has been utilized for economic pur- 

 poses outside his immediate wants; it has gone to build the town 

 that has grown up behind him, to build ships, railways, bridges 

 and vehicles of transportation, and for fuel for towns and manufac- 

 tories. 



Speaking specificall}' of our own country, it is only within little 

 more than half a century that lumbering as a special industry has 

 begun to destroy the forest simply for the sake of merchandising its 

 products; but that half century has wrought such violent changes 

 in the states where lumbering as a special business has been fol- 

 lowed, that it has roused the thoughtful to ask the question: What 

 will the end be if the present destruction continues with no attempt 

 made to modify its wastefulness? That there has been wastefulness 

 b}^ lumbermen and farmers is bej'ond question. But the past is be- 

 hind us; we may deplore its extravagance, but we must admit there 

 are extenuating circumstances. Artificial wants of modern civiliza- 

 tion often made the farmer settler extravagant in his treatment of 

 his woodland, while the professional lumberman has been impelled 

 to the same thing by the necessitj'^ of making a profit from his 

 operations. The enormous demand for lumber from non-lumbering 

 sections has forced the production, while costly transportation to 

 market has obliged him to leave all the coarser and low-valued pro- 

 ducts unutilized, not more than 20 per cent, of actual bulk of the 

 forest growth ever producing any profitable return. 



It is a fact that only quite recently has science discovered the 

 means of utilizing forest waste b5' converting it into b5'"-products of 

 great value in small bulk, thus overcoining the problem of trans- 

 portation to market at a profit. Until recently' the only use of lum- 

 bering waste has been to convert it into small completely finished 

 articles of every day use, and this could only be done in the older 



