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AMERICAN FORESTRY 



VOL. 28 



JUNE, 1922 



NO. 342 



THE PASSING OF AN INDUSTRY 

 AN EPIC OF THE GREAT AMERICAN FOREST 



By E, G. Cheyney 



Professor of Forestry, University of Minnesota 



'T'HE Ages of Stone, of Bronze, and that of Steel have 

 * been written up in prose and verse in every civilized 

 coun'.ry of the world, but the Age of Wood, one of the 

 most amazing phenomena in economic history, lies buried 

 and unrecorded in the haze of a too recent past. And 

 yet the tale of how a mighty industry was born in the 

 struggling colonies of New England, swept like a scourge 

 from ocean to ocean across the vast North American 

 continent and almost died on the Pacific Coast, all within 



the memory of men now living, forms one of the most 

 remarkable stories in the development of an altogether 

 remarkable nation. Only those who have made an inti- 

 mate study of our economic growth can ever know how 

 much our prosperity has been dependent upon wood. 



The seventeenth century was a f>eriod of violent fer- 

 ment throughout all Europe. The tyrannical govern- 

 ments of that time were wholly absorbed in their thirty 

 years' war, which was only a convenient term for desig- 



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Courtesy of Goldwyn Pictures 



THE FOREST PRIMEVAI^RICH HERITAGE OF A CONTINENT 



