COMMERCIAL FORESTRY 



with indefinite supplies. Many of our country- 

 loving and far-sighted citizens have time and again 

 in the past predicted our present calamity; but 

 the commercial era has absorbed us, and the 

 successful business man of America has been the 

 admired of admirers. /Esthetics in a new country 

 are as nothing compared with commercial activi- 

 ties, when the bases of the commodities dealt in 

 are free gifts and cost only for the marketing. 

 The balance finally comes with the nation's 

 development. 



From the substantial old-time sawmill, form- 

 erly so common upon our streams, now only relics 

 of bygone days, our evolution has developed to 

 the portable mill. Instead of taking the logs to 

 the mill, we now take the mill to the logs. While 

 it is easy to comprehend this change of milling 

 operations and the economy therein, the effect 

 upon forestry itself and the country community 

 has changed most remarkably. When logs were 

 taken to the mills, most farmers employed their 

 teams and labor during the winter months in 

 getting out lumber for home consumption, but 

 sold enough to make the effort -and time profit- 

 able. The old-fashioned method, too, of not 

 cutting clean but taking only the larger and 

 mature trees, did not destroy the forest, for re- 

 placement followed rapidly. Our present method 

 is to sell the stumpage; and, as the purchaser 

 finds he is able to market every vestige of the 

 product, the forest area is stripped of vegeta- 

 tion. In earlier days this extreme of clearing 

 was done only when the land was to be used 

 for agricultural purposes. Where the larger 

 growth only was taken out in the past, in twenty 

 years or so the same land could be cut over 

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