ECONOMIC ASPECTS. 



117 



Kven if, instead of the value of the wood article, ready for marketing, we refer only to the 

 stum page, i. e., the royalty which the wood consumer pays to the land owner for the privilege of 

 taking the valuable material from the laud, we will lind it ten times as large as the royalties paid 

 tor coal, and twenty-live times as large as those paid for iron ore. Nay, even compared with farm 

 rents, the stuinpage value of an acre of forest exceeds its farm value. 



We can then assert that next to the soil ami climate itself, the basis for agricultural produc- 

 tion, our forest resources are the most important at the present time as producers of the most 

 needful materials of our civilization. Nay, if we reali/e that in addition the forest cover as a mere 

 surface condition of the earth a fleets our local climate, and, still more, acts favorably upon the 

 distribution of our water supplies the. most essential factor in agricultural production we can not 

 easily overrate its value, either as a factor of production or as an element of protection; its prod- 

 uct and its protection are as much necessaries of life as air and water. 



It has furthermore this advantage over all other resources, that by the mere manner of exploi- 

 tation, without much human labor, it can be reproduced; it is a restorable resource which can be 

 utilized without deteriorating or exhausting it, provided the exploitation be carried on rationally 

 and with due regard to the laws of tree growth. 



The truth of the assertion that the forest, next to agricultural resources, furnishes a larger 

 product thai any other resource, and that the industries relying on wood supplies employ more 

 capital and labor and produce more values in their product than any one other industry or group 

 of like industries, will appear from the following statement: 



I, /tiding industries compared. 

 [Data from Census 1890, in round numbers.] 



From this table it appears that agriculture, standing first in capital, persons employed, and 

 value of products, the industries relying upon forest products stand easily second, exceeding in the 

 value of products the mining industries by more than 50 per cent. The industries relying directly 

 or indirectly on forest products employ readily more than one million workers (enumeration being 

 imperfect), producing nearly two billion dollars of value, The manufactures relying on wood 

 wholly or in part more than double the value of the lumber or wood used, giving employment to 

 more than half a million men and about equaling the combined manufactures of all woolen, cotton, 

 and leather goods in persons employed, wages paid, and values produced. 



Census statistics of the employment of capital, persons employed, and wages paid in the 

 minor forest industries are absent. The fact that many people are only temporarily or incidentally 

 and for a part of the year engaged in the exploitation of the forest would make such enumeration 

 well nigh impossible. Besides the lumber industry and such kinds of exploitation as can be, at 

 least, approximately enumerated always remaining below the truth a large number of industries 

 and manufactures rely upon wood as the principal material, others employing it to a greater or 

 less extent. An attempt has been made to classify these according to the estimated percentage of 

 -wood entering into their products and assuming that capital, labor, and value of products add the 

 same proportion to the total as tlxe raw materials used, and these figures have been employed in 

 the preceding table. As a matter of fact, there is probably more labor employed in shaping wood 

 than this percentage would indicate. 



