328 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



uum 



' H' * 



l/^>-^MSi 



"BURNED TIMBER BUILDS NO HOMES" THE RESULT OF FIRE AND ITS RAVAGES SO OFTEN OCCASIONED 

 BY CARELESS LUMBERING METHODS AND CONTRIBUTING LARGELY TO THE DECLINE OF THE LUMBER 

 INDUSTRY IN ONE SECTION OF THE COUNTRY OR ANOTHER. 



the Age of Wood. Ships for the transportation of wood 

 and other things across the sea were scarce and hard to 

 get, but ships were made of wood in those days and wood 

 was cheap. As a result there quickly grew up that mighty 

 naval and mercantile marine which challenged the su- 

 premacy of even Great Britain herself upon the high seas 

 and triumphantly held its place till wood became a second- 

 ary material for the building of ships, a death blow to the 

 American merchant fleets. 



The population of the country was increasing by leaps 

 and bounds. Homes were needed in unheard of numbers. 

 Instead of the old family homes of the old country, the 

 old stone homes which housed the race generation after 



generation, a new set of buildings were needed on every 

 farm, towns appeared over night and a few hundred dol- 

 lars built the American workingman a wooden home 

 which none but a prince could have owned abroad. 



A few of the later colonists, mostly with money which 

 they brought with them, emulated the mother country 

 and built massive homes of stone and brick, but they 

 were negligible in number. 'By far the greater number 

 were built from the native forests and there came into 

 being the simple, commodious, hospitable home of those 

 early Colonial days, the only truly American architecture 

 that this country ever knew till the days of the sky- 

 scrapers 200 years later. And with the building of those 



