214 



Canadian Forestry Journal, Ma]), 1919 



spruce on an area every 5, 10 or 20 years 

 \nd expect eventually to get saw logs. 



Killing the Forest Children. 



Let me state once more the conditions on the 

 burned areas: Thousands of square miles of 

 forest land in the Dominion have been so sev- 

 erely burned by repeated fires that they will lie 

 barren of commercial trees for hundreds of years 

 unless they are planted by man. Other thou- 

 sands of square miles, less seriously burned, are 

 restocking themselves naturally to valuable 

 species, but these areas are being constantly 

 reduced and transferred into the first class men- 

 tioned because of inadequate fire protection. 



I asked you a moment ago, if you had de- 

 manded security for the Canadian forest capital 

 in which you share. Have you? You have 

 spent a million dollars a year for the past ten 

 years for protection of your property. You 

 have invested ten million dollars in a certain 

 project. Have you asked for an adequate re- 

 turn on that investment? Let me tell you, al- 

 though you have spent millions of dollars on 

 forest protection, the safety of the forests is still 

 largely in the hands of Providence. I mean it 

 depends upon weather conditions. Things go 

 fairly well until we have an exceptionally dry 

 season. The technique of fire-fighting methods 

 has not been sufficiently developed to cope with 

 the extra dry season. A very effective pre- 

 ventive method, although successfully practiced 

 in certain districts in the West, has not yet been 

 employed other than experimentally in the East, 

 namely the disposal of the slash which becomes 

 extremely inflammable in softwood forests, as 

 in the north country. Unless the slash in cer- 

 tain districts is burned at the time of lumbering, 

 we may as well become resigned to periodic for- 

 est holocausts. The best fire-fighting organiza- 

 tion in the world could not master a situation 

 in which all the odds were against it. 



The Patronage Millstone. 



Another reason for this insecurity of the for- 

 est, the reason more time and thought have not 

 been put upon the development of fire-fighting 

 methods is largely because the rangers are not 

 hired because they are efficient workmen or even 

 good fire-fighters — but for other seasons. 



I have only words of praise for the men in 

 charge of the Dominion and Provincial Forestry 

 Branches. There are men at Ottawa; there are 

 men here in Queen's Park, men in nearly every 

 provincial capital, hard working, patriotic men 

 who are giving the best efforts of their lives in 

 the attempt to protect our forest capital, but 



they are far from successful because m the end 

 they find astride every trail that hideous grinning 

 monster, political patronage. Who is to blame 

 for this state of affairs? Now, I have thought 

 over this matter a good deal, and I have come 

 to the conclusion that no politician, no official 

 of the government is to blame; they are simply 

 the victims of an inherited political tradition 

 with regard to the methods of handhng :Jrovern- 

 ment business. You and I are really the re- 

 sponsible parties. The average citizen is to 

 blame because he does not demand in govern- 

 ment business the same standard that he de- 

 mands in his own private business. Political 

 patronage is a question of public morals and 

 the problem will be solved only on this ground. 

 If, as an organization, you are contemplat- 

 ing presenting a memorial at Ottawa or in 

 Queen's Park on this subject, I make bold to 

 suggest that you state the case something like 

 this: Our forests are in a precarious condition. 

 Unless they are relieved, their revenue-produc- 

 ing function will be practically destroyed be- 

 cause of repeated forest fires. We believe this 

 condition is chiefly due to an archaic, inefficient, 

 rotten system of political patronage, a system 

 for which you are not responsible because you 

 inherited it from your political ancestors. In 

 fact, we ackowledge that we as tax-paying 

 citizens are really responsible for a condition 

 of affairs for which we have in the past con- 

 demned you. Now, cannot we get together and 

 devise some means of putting forest protection 

 on a business basis. I have a feeling that the 

 responsible politician, I mean the legislator and 

 the cabinet minister are just as disgusted with 

 the whole business as anyone else, and that ap- 

 proached in this manner, they would meet you 

 more than half way. 



What of White Pine? 



Let me say again that the first step in for- 

 estry practice is the maintenance of the earning 

 power of the capital stock. This primary object 

 has not yet been accomplished in Canada be- 

 cause we have not yet devised the means and 

 methods to make the forests reasonably safe 

 from destruction by fire. 



Now, let us turn to the unburned logged-over 

 lands and see how our definition of forestry 

 applies to their treatment. We have the tes- 

 timony of lumbermen that the end of the white 

 pine supply in Eastern Canada is in sight. There 

 will be scattered white pine trees in the forests 

 for many years, but outside the forest reserves 

 only a few large stands of virgin white pine 



