CANADIAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION. 79 



in number over 20 per cent of the 763 pulp and paper mills of all the United States, 

 manufactured into pulp 505,154 cords of spruce, 141,729 of which was Canadian 

 spruce. 45,227 cords of Canadian spruce were also used by the pulp mills of In- 

 diana, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Besides the wood, the American mills purchase 

 about ths of all the pulp manufactured in the province of Quebec. 



All those facts show that the paper industry of the United States wants our 

 pulpwood and that the demand from this source will increase at the same rate as the 

 home supply decreases. I would not say that the American pulp and paper manu- 

 facturers cannot do without our wood, but I contend that they can do much better 

 with it, and on this contention I base the opinion that the requirements of the Ameri- 

 can manufacturers impart to our forests of pulpwood a value which can only increase 

 with time, if we take care not to bar that trade by unwise regulations or legislation. 



Our pine forests stand nearly in the same position : their value shall of necessity 

 increase in the same ratio as the exhaustion of the pineries in the United States. 



Mr. George W. Hotchkiss, secretary to the Chicago Lumberman's Exchange, 

 ranks amongst the men who are the best informed about this matter, in which his 

 opinion is an authority. In 1888, he wrote as follows: 



' One hundred years ago, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, New York and Penn- 

 sylvania, could boast vast forests of white pine. West of the lakes, Michigan, Wis- 

 consin and Minnesota, so late as fifty years ago, were unbroken in forest resources, 

 and the white pine predominated. 



' To-day Maine gives us some spruce and a little small sapling pine, such as 

 would hardly have been sent for fire-wood in her palmy days of lumbering. Ver- 

 mont, New Hampshire and New York may still boast an occasional clump of trees, 

 but have lost all pretensions of lumber-producing regions. Pennsylvania has a few 

 hundred million feet on the sides of the Alleghanies, but has dropped out of the list 

 as a lumber producer. East of the Great Lakes nought remains (excepting the 

 spruce forests of Northern and Eastern Maine) save hemlock and hardwood, and 

 these in very limited quantities, insufficient to supply the home demand in a majority 

 of localities. Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota are the last remaining resort for 

 lumbermen east of the Rocky Mountains. Originally there was probably 150,000,- 

 000,000 feet B.M. in Michigan, but fifty years' work has reduced the supply to prob- 

 ably not over twelve to twenty billion feet, with an annual average cut for the past 

 five years of not far from four and a half billions; and the cutting is so close as to 

 exterminate all the pine timber on the tract operated upon. Wisconsin can hardly 

 be estimated at over thirty-five billions, little more than would suffice to supply the 

 consumption of the United States as a whole for one year. 



'Minnesota, set down in the census of 1880 as having 11,000,000,000 feet B.M., 

 an amount disputed by some as too high, by others as too low, if allowed to-day at 10,000,- 

 000,000 could furnish but one year's supply for the mills of the north-western pine pro- 

 ducing states. In fact, if the mills of these three states were run to their capacity for 

 six years there would be but little pine left for the seventh year's production. And these 

 estimates of timber include the red and Norway pine which forms a noticeable per- 

 centage of the whole. In Michigan and Wisconsin there are still large quantities of 

 hardwood, but it is not being cared for with that appreciation of its value which is 

 desirable. It has, however, this advantage, it can be reproduced; pine can not.' 



A few months ago the Mississippi Valley Lumberman published the following 

 statement : 



' The pine forests of Michigan have been consumed and their lumber product has 

 ceased to be an important factor in the general market. The annual output from that 

 state is now below a billion feet. Wisconsin mills still continue to manufacture about 

 two billion feet of lumber annually. In our investigations to secure information upon 

 the 1 probable extent of the standing white pine in the northwest, we have compiled the 

 following data for Wisconsin : In 1897 the Department of Agriculture of the United 

 States government made a calculation of the white pine timber then standing in Wis- 

 consin. This was based on estimates furnished by lumbermen. The research was 



