Conservation of Natural Resources in California. S3 



unspeakable as in the pine forests of the North. Stave-makers, tie 

 cutters, vehicle and machinery makers, have ripped open the hardwood 

 regions of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas, until the end is as 

 close there as it is in the vaster pine woods. 



On the Pacific coast we used not long ago only the finest of redwood, 

 gradually then the Douglas fir or spruce. Now we cut in the West 

 hemlock, cedar, lodge-pole pine, anything that will hold a saw blade. 

 For a long time we thought these great Western stores exhaustless, just 

 as not long ago we thought the forests of Michigan and Wisconsin 

 exhaustless, where now remains in great part only a horrible wilderness. 



All the time poorer species and grades of timber are employed all 

 over America, East and West. All the time the "estimates" of our 

 remaining timber increase. But all the time the standing trees them- 

 selves decrease ; all the time the fires rage ; all the time the waste goes 

 on, immense logs, the butts of giant trees, being left in the woods to 

 rot because it does not pay to get them out of the woods "at the present 

 price of lumber." All the time the loss to the people of America goes 

 on, and the price to the people of America goes up; and all- the time 

 the people of America either do not know or do not care. 



We ought to care, and if we know the facts no doubt we should care. 

 What, then, are some of the facts? Plenty of facts, and very obvious 

 ones, lie at hand for any one interested in any sort of building or 

 manufacture requiring the use of lumber. What was $8 or $10 is now 

 worth $25 to $30 a thousand. Ordinary clear building and finishing 

 lumber costs from $30 to $125 a thousand. The price of all lumber has 

 in five years risen over fifty per cent. We use lumber now that twenty 

 years ago would have been rejected with scorn by any builder. Yet 

 prices are going up, and still up ; and the lumbermen wish these prices 

 "protected," and ask that the Sherman law be revoked. In spite of 

 these facts, the professional optimist in lumber attempts to soothe us 

 with the assurance that there is plenty of timber "farther west"; that 

 it will last "indefinitely" at the "present rate." 



But the lumberman bases all his timber estimates on the present rate 

 of cutting and on the present rate of demand. True, no one can 

 prophesy or estimate the accelerated, the cumulative demand of the 

 future. Decade after decade of our past has shown us that we could 

 not dream big enough to cover the actual figures of this demand. Yet 

 this unestimated factor is the element of danger for the future. 



The lumberman does not figure on the million or more of immigrants 

 we take in each year to house, not to mention an occasional American 

 native born. Worst and most absurd of all, he figures on the timber 

 supply lasting on the basis of its all being used. Yet of all the timber 

 now left standing in America, to represent our entire future supply, 



