STATE HOETTCULTURAL SOCIETY. 201 



In very truth it maj' be said that iron and coal are almost as plenty 

 in this country as dirt ! They are almost as boundless as " the empty, 

 vast and wandering air." We have all the materials for iron making 

 in conjunction, and all of them above water level! From their beds 

 they can be carried by their own gravity to the smelting furnaces and 

 rolling mills. In no other country on earth do such conditions pre- 

 vail; in no other country do they even remotely approximate them! 

 This certainly means that iron can be easily and profitably produced 

 in the United States at a lower price than in any other country, for 

 in all other countries materials must be mined from great depths and 

 brought together from long distances. 



Now, with cheap iron given us, what will we do with it, how make 

 make it supplement timber, and lessen the consumption of wood? I 

 answer, in a thousand ways! But I will call your attention to but a 

 few. One of our most remorseless timber destroying agents is the 

 railroad. The timber it uses is of the very best. The element it takes 

 from the forests is analagous to the youth of a nation. The priraest, 

 sturdiest, most promising representatives of the forest are sacrificed 

 to the demands of the railroad. Whether for ties, bridges, culverts 

 or cars, nothing but the freshest, purest blood of the fast disappear- 

 ing aristocracy of trees will satisfy the appetite of the railroad giant. 

 Five hundred and ten million cubic feet of such timber is used annu- 

 ally for ties, bridges and telegraph poles alone. Estimating the an- 

 nual growths of our forests at forty cubic feet an acre, it takes the 

 growth of 12,750,000 acres to provide for these three items, and every 

 c ubic foot of them should be iron ! 



Iron bridges and culverts for railroads should be made compulsory 

 by law. The London Daily News, in commenting on that terrible dis- 

 aster at Chatsworth, last summer, said: "And the strangest thing 

 about this strange, sad accident, is that the culvert was made of 

 wood." Strange, indeed, must it have seemed to an intelligent Eng- 

 lishman; and it should be made impossible by intelligent Americans! 

 The iron railroad tie is no longer an experiment. It has been in 

 use in Europe for twenty years, and substitution of iron for wooden 

 ties is now being made there with marvelous rapidity. In Germany, 

 Switzerland and Holland one eighth of the entire railroad mileage 

 was supplied with iron ties as long ago as 1884. At the present time 

 the percentage is much larger, and is rapidly growing. Even in 

 sleepy old Mexico, on one railroad alone from forty to fifty thousand 

 iron ties are being put in every year. This substitution of iron for 

 wood is done in the interest of economy; but this interest does 



