CHAPTER XIV. 



FOREST ECONOMICS. 



Alarm About Destruction of Forests ! For many years 

 the attention of the people of this country has been drawn to the 

 possibility of a depletion of our forests and a timber famine in 

 the near future. But increased transportation facilities have 

 made new sources of timber easily accessible to us, which fact, 

 together with the use of inferior kinds of trees for lumber, has 

 kept the predicted timber famine from materializing, until now 

 our people have become skeptical on this point, and look upon 

 these predictions as very premature. To any one who carefully 

 studies the subject, however, it will be very evident that our 

 supply of White Pine, that most generally useful of all our timber 

 trees, is fast decreasing, and that it cannot be many years before 

 this will be apparent by the advance of prices for this kind of 

 timber. Most of the land of good quality in Minnesota seems 

 destined to be eventually used for farming purposes, but there 

 will always remain a large area of stony or very sandy land that 

 will be unfit for profitable agriculture, and which will produce 

 more revenue when used for the production of timber than when 

 used for any other crop. There is also a large amount of land 

 that will not be needed for farming purposes for many years, and 

 this should grow timber until needed for agriculture. Besides 

 this, with the increased value of fuel, lumber and other forest 

 products, there will come a better appreciation of the importance 

 of farm wood lots as a source of fuel, poles, lumber, etc., for 

 farm use, and a more general disposition to save some land for 

 this purpose. 



Price of Fuel. At present in the greater part of our for- 

 ested area north of St. Paul the timber is greatly in the way of 

 settlers, and the price of fuel is simply the cost of gathering it, 

 no charge whatever being made for the wood itself. This state 

 of things exists because not only in the forests but more espe- 

 cially in the great area of cut-over timber lands in that section 

 there is such an immense amount of dead and down timber that 



