CHAPTER II. 

 WORK IN THE WOODS. 



The products of the forest are among the things 

 which civilized men can not do without. Wood is 

 needed for building, for fuel, for paper pulp, and for 

 unnumbered other uses, and trees must be cut down to 

 supply it. It would be both useless and mistaken to 

 try to stop the cutting of timber, for it could not cease 

 without great injury, not to the lumbermen only, but 

 to all the people of the nation. The question is not 

 of saving the trees, for ever} T tree must inevitably die, 

 but of saving the forest by conservative ways of cut- 

 ting the trees. If the forest is to be preserved, the 

 timber crop now ripe must be gathered in such a way 

 as to make sure of other crops hereafter. 



In general, it is true that the present methods of 

 lumbering are unnecessarily destructive and wasteful. 

 This is not because lumbermen are more greedy of 

 gain or less careful of public interests than other busi- 

 ness men, for they are not. It happens partly because 

 in this country, compared with France and Germany 

 and other densety populated regions, there is so much 

 timber in proportion to the population that it does not 

 pay the lumberman to take anything more than the 

 better parts of the trees he fells. The lumberman can 

 not do his work unless he does it at a profit, and he 

 38 



