142 FORESTRY INVESTIGATIONS U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



manufactures large quantities of material appear repeatedly, often with slight or no modifications, 

 as output of the same manufacture, as when a piece of costly sheet metal is first credited to the 

 rolling mill, then to the tank or boiler maker, who merely cuts and rivets it into shape, and finally, 

 without any modification at all, reappears as part of a distilling outfit or steam, machinery, and 

 thus the same highly manufactured article appears three separate times as items of the iron 

 industry. 



The sawmilling industry of the State alone represents a capital of about $84,000,000, or equal 

 to more than one-eighth of the total valuation of taxable property of the State. The same 

 industry pays a tax of $681,000, a sum equal to half the entire State taxes. It pays $3,000,000 

 for running expenses aside from wages, more than $15,000,000 for wages and contracts for bring- 

 ing the raw material to the mill, besides expending nearly $1,000,000 for the maintenance of teams. 



Besides these establishments, active in the mere exploitation of the woods, there are planing 

 and pulp mills, furniture, cooperage, carriage, and car shops, the value of whose finished products 

 in wooden materials amount to over $25,000,000 per year. The greater part of these is directly 

 dependent for continuance on the forest supplies of the State. 



FORESTS AND WATER FLOW. 



The value of the forests in tempering the rigors of a northern continental climate arid in 

 maintaining a more uniform water flow by regulating drainage conditions can not here be consid- 

 ered; suffice it to say that the Fox River is failing, that the "June freshets," formerly a regular 

 phenomenon of all the driving streams of this area, no longer occur, that hundreds of small 

 swamps have become fields and meadows without a foot of ditching, and that miles of corduroy 

 roads and roadways paved with poles and logs remain as unused relics, reminders of a moister 

 state of things. 



FUTURE OF SUPPLIES AND MILLING. 



What the future will do for these important forests is difficult to say. That the pine forests 

 are fast disappearing, that the hardwoods are being cut and their productive area reduced, is 

 evident to everyone. 



A closer examination shows that the hemlock growth can not be depended upon to continue 

 itself by unaided natural reproduction. It has failed to reproduce for a long time. It also appears 

 that the hardwoods, though perfectly able under normal conditions to hold their own and continue 

 as forests, have not done so; that, especially on all lighter soils, the burned over lands are covered 

 with runty, unpromising remnants, unable to keep out weeds and grass from the soil, injured by 

 fire, and scarcely able to maintain the semblance of a woodland. 



That pine, especially white pine, is perfectly capable not only to continue as forest, but also 

 to reclothe old burned-over slashings on all kinds of soil, is amply proven by the numerous extensive 

 young.groves which may be seen, especially about Shawano, Grand Rapids, Black River Falls, and 

 along the Wisconsin and Chippewa, and which occur in every county of north Wisconsin, probably 

 aggregating not less than 200,000 acres. But it is equally certain that the great mass of pine 

 slashings have remained and will continue to remain barren wastes, and that of the 8,000,000 acres 

 of cut-over lands in north Wisconsin not one-tenth is stocked with growing timber. And even the 

 swamp woods have no future, for it is here, among the tall marsh grass and masses of dead poles, 

 that most of the fires start. 



WHAT IS LOST TO THE STATE. 



In this way an area now measuring about 8,000,000 acres and rapidly increasing in extent 

 remains unproductive. Counting only 20 cubic feet, or 100 feet B. M., as the annual growth per 

 acre on lands entirely without any care save protection against fire, the State of Wisconsin loses 

 annually by this condition of things 800,000,000 feet B. M. of marketable saw timber; nor is this 

 all, for even with primitive management this amount could largely be increased. 



KKSUME OF CONDITIONS. 



We have, then, briefly, the following state of affairs: Of the ls,500,000 acres under considera- 

 tion not more than 7 per cent are under cultivation; the balance is forest, brush, swamps, or 



