78 TIMBER SUPPLIES AND RUSSIAN FORESTS 



believe that these countries will be able to continue 

 to satisfy our requirements during the next forty to 

 fifty years. Take the countries across the Atlantic 

 in the first instance. Is it likely that America, with 

 her own colossal demand for timber of all classes and 

 her rapidly diminishing area of, for our purpose, acces- 

 sible forest, will be able to supply the European market 

 for many more years ? Canada again is a country with 

 a rapidly increasing population. She has extensive 

 forests. But a great part of the more accessible areas 

 have been cut out. It is not easy to estimate how long 

 she could help the Mother Country with supplies, but 

 it is difficult to perceive how, with her own growing 

 requirements, she could do so for anything like this 

 period. And in each case the cost of transit of the raw 

 material, as the more accessible forests are cut out, 

 will increase and must inevitably react on the prices 

 and keep them high. The controversy which arose 

 a few years ago over the question of Canada granting 

 America a preferential tariff for wood pulp must be 

 fresh in the minds of many. And how long in any 

 event are these countries likely to be willing to export 

 raw materials as against manufactured articles ? Our 

 industries require the raw materials. It cannot pay 

 us to import manufactured ones. A tariff on raw 

 material would kill our industries. Newfoundland 

 may help us for a time with wood pulp, but that is 

 only one item of our requirements. 



Turning to Europe, the countries from which we 

 have mainly drawn our supplies in the past are Norway, 

 Sweden, and Russia. It is difficult to credit that any 

 one who has any acquaintance with the position of the 



