is wasteful in lumber operations must eventually come out of 

 him. The ideal of scientific forestry is to provide for the con- 

 sumer the maximum of material for the minimum of expense, 

 even while it provides a maximum of present and future 

 profit for the land owner and forest operator. 



Lumbering is the actual instrument by which profits are 

 derived from forest land, and it is upon the way this instrument 

 is used, and with what foresight and economy and common 

 sense, that the present and future value of forest lands depends. 



In the past lumbering has considered the forest as a single 

 crop to be harvested once for all, rather than as a continuous 

 crop. Under the economic conditions which have prevailed 

 that was, unquestionably, the most profitable method for the 

 operators. Men work in the woods to make money, and so 

 long as apparently unlimited resources are at hand few will 

 stop to consider a remote and improbable future, when there 

 is a keen need and opportunity for immediate profits. The 

 working idea has been, as a rule, to get out all available timber 

 as cheaply as possible, considering neither the larger trees 

 carelessly left, the young growth harmed, nor the condition 

 of the forest when the work is completed. Conditions have 

 seemed to call for this, and in some places still do. But under 

 many present circumstances it is both wrong and wasteful. 



Upon the idea of getting out lumber as cheaply as possible, 

 as the only prime motive, there has gradually been grafted a 

 kindred idea of saving for a future cut. From economy in the 

 mill has come economy in the woods. The first step has almost 

 always been the enforcement of a specific diameter limit, below 

 which no trees shall be taken, and that limit has saved many 

 areas to forest land that otherwise would have been depleted. 



The head woodsman for a large land owning company pointed 

 with pride to a distinctly marked line of growth which was 

 visible from the lake. On one side of the line were the light 

 tops of hard woods, on the other were black masses and clus- 

 ters of spruce spotting the hardwood background. "That's the 

 way with all our towns," said the woodsman. In that locality 

 a specific diameter limit has been enforced for soft woods, with 

 the penalty of increased stumpage price on undersized trees, 

 and the result has been the careful sparing of young trees of 

 the more valuable kind. 



Forest 

 customs 



First steps in 

 conservation 



