420 



Canadian FoTcstr)) Journal, October, 1919 



REFORESTATION NOW NECESSARY 



Eilrvood Wilson, Manager Forestry Branch, the Lcurenlide Co., 

 in Toronto Financial Post. 



Cutting Arranged to Rotate Over Replanted Areas — Seaplanes 

 for Surveys and Fire Protection 



The man who invests in any business ven- 

 ture naturally wishes to know as much as pos- 

 sible about the various factors which make for 

 the success of the enterprise. If he is buying 

 bonds he wants to know that the security back 

 of them is sufficient to reimburse him if the 

 business fails. If he is a buyer of the stock 

 he also wants to know what the chances are 

 for earning the dividends which he hopes will 

 be paid. The bond holder will look into the 

 value of the buildings and plant, the real estate, 

 the existence and value of good-will, if any, 

 and everything else which might have a sale 

 value. The stockholder is more concerned 

 with intangibles than the bond-buyer. In ad- 

 dition to the physical side of the property, he 

 wishes to know who the directors are and their 

 character and financial standing; who the man- 

 ager is; where and how large the market is for 

 the product; where the raw materials and sup- 

 plies are to come from, and what the shipping 

 facilities are. 



In both cases, however, the wise investor will 

 be much concerned about the source and quan- 

 tity and price of the raw materials which enter 

 into the finished product. A plant which has 

 only enough raw materials for a few years, or 

 which has to face a continually increasing raw 

 material cost, would not be considered a good 

 investment. Only in the event of plans to set 

 aside a certain amount each year for the com- 

 plete amortization of the plant after a certain 

 term of years, as in the case of a well managed 

 gold mine, for instance, would the careful in- 

 vestor be satisfied to put his money into an 

 enterprise which faced a shortage of raw ma- 

 terial. 



Thought Woodlands Inexhaustible. 



The pulp and paper industry is one of the 

 most important, perhaps from the point of view 

 of trade balances and our exports the most im- 

 portant, and the person at present or prospect- 

 ively interested in this business should look into 

 the future supply of raw material, wood. In 

 the beginning of this industry, when plants were 



few and small, little thought was given to this 

 question. We were supposed to have vast areas 

 of timber. In the case of most mills, the supply 

 was literally at their back-doors and they never 

 troubled to ask about the future. In fact they 

 operated their woodlands as though they were 

 inexhaustible mines, except that no reserve was 

 set aside for depletion. Explorations by trained 

 foresters and studies of the rate of growth and 

 yield of the different species have shown abso- 

 lutely that the forests are not inexhaustible or 

 even self-perpetuating. The fact that Canada 

 has millions of acres of forests does not mean 

 that we have unlimited supplies of timber. The 

 trees may not be the kind we need, any more 

 than a vacant lot covered with weeds is a 

 vegetable garden; the trees we need may be so 

 few in number on a given area or may be so 

 difficult of access that the possession of forests 

 of them may be of no more value than sea- 

 water, known to contain a small amount of 

 gold, is to the gold miner, or rich coal deposits 

 at the north pole to the coal operator. In all 

 the countries of Europe, except Russia and 

 Siberia, virgin forests have gradually been cut 

 away and their place taken by planted forests 

 or those which renew themselves under con- 

 ditions controlled by man. The end of the 

 pulpwood supply in the Eastern United States 

 is in sight within the next fifteen years appj-ox- 

 imately, and the day when the available timber 

 for any given mill in Canada will be used up 

 can be predicted with reasonable accuracy. 

 Plans to Save Limits. 

 What shall be done to perpetuate our sup- 

 plies within reasonable distances and costs of 

 transportation and in sufficient quantity to keep 

 our mills running? There is, so far as has 

 been discovered, only one answer: so to oper- 

 ate our forests that not a particle of wood shall 

 be wasted, and to begin planting operations at 

 once. Plantations can be made on lands near 

 enough to the mills to make fire protection 

 much cheaper and more efficient than in the 

 virgin forests; wastes can be eliminated; huge 



