177 



years' consumption ; there is, fortunately, reason to believe that the statement 

 is inaccurate, and proof of the assertion that the United States consumes 

 5,050,000 of St. Petersburg standard hundreds, or 16,665,000 loads of white 

 pine wood annually, will be awaited with interest. It must be taken into con- 

 sideration that Canada supplies a good percentage of the present United States 

 consumption, and that the precise minimum dimension has not been defined which 

 the census assessors have put down as ready for the axe. The large number of 

 trees, too, which, in the course of eight or ten years will reach the cutting size, 

 although now a trifle under it, must also be considered. Taking credit for all these 

 items, however, and assuming the available quantity to be as much underrated 

 as the consumption is evidently over-estimated, the outlook is sufficiently alarm- 

 ing, and amply justifies compulsory replanting and reforesting enactments 

 wherever the ground is best adapted for the production of forest.* 



As regards American spruce, which competes in the British market with 

 Swedish and Russian white wood, the question of its future supply becomes one 

 of paramount weight. One of the most important facts to be borne in mind, is 



* At a meeting of the Genessee Valley Forestry Association, held in the Chamber of Commerce 

 Booms at Rochester, on the I0th May, 1892, Mr. B E. Fernow, Chief of the Division of 

 Forestry, Department of Agriculture, is reported to have said : " Although there is still plenty 

 of virgin timber in the country, the time when it will be comparatively exhausted is drawing 

 near. We have in the United States about 500,000,000 acres in woodland. If all this were in 

 good condition, with full grown timber on it which is far from being true there could not be 

 found on it more than 1,500,000,000,000 cubic feet of wood, which is at the rate of 10,000 feet 

 b.m. of saw- timber per acre in the average. Since we use annually from 20,000,000,000 to 

 25,000,000,000 cubic feet of wood, of which 30,000,000,000 to 40,000,000,000 feet b.m. is saw- 

 timber, it appears that even with these extravagant assumptions regarding supplies, we would 

 exhaust them in sixty or seventy years, assuming that new growth is consumed by increased 

 requirements. That this increase takes place may be learned from my computation, according 

 to which the values of forest products and wood manufactures during the census years 1860, 

 1870, 1880 and 1890 amount to $300,000,000, $600,000,000, $900,000,000 and $1,200,000,000, 

 respectively, or an increase of thirty per cent, for every decade ; and since it takes at least sixty 

 to seventy years to grow saw-timber what we now cut is usually twice as old, or more it 

 would appear that whoever invests his money in forest culture to-day must be amply repaid- by 

 the crop, albeit his children will reap the profits really. Certain it is that it always requires 

 time, and quite a long time, before the results of such management become visible, and that is 

 largely why people are afraid to stake their money in the business. 



" For profitable forest management, good, permanent roads are indispensable. Their 

 money value may be judged from the experience of the little Dukedom of Brunswick, where, 

 without any other changes, the building of a rational system of roads through its forest domain 

 increased the income from the forest management by twenty per cent. 



"In the government forests the annual net profits range from $4.11 per acre of forest in 

 the highly cultivated and densely populated Kingdom of Saxony, to $1.19 in mountainous 

 Bavaria, where the government forests comprise 2,300,000 acres on which the government 

 spends $3,130,000 and gets in return $5,880,000, netting $2,730,000 every year, and giving 

 besides employment to a large force of men. In Prussia the net annual profit for every acre of 

 woodland was at the rate of $1.31 on $6,000,000 acres woodland, the expenditure last year bein^ 

 nearly $8,800,000 for the administration , and with prices in the woods of three dollars per cord 

 of fire-wood in the average, and ten dollars and thirty-two cents per thousand feet b.m. of saw- 

 timber, the returns were over $17,600,000, netting $8,835,119, and this is continuous, ever 

 increasing revenue. 



" Why should not the State of New York, now owning as State property twice the area 

 which little Saxony owns in woodlands, and proposing to acquire additional lands so as to make 

 the area between that of Bavaria and Prussia's government forests, why should not New York 

 make its Adirondack forests, if not as profitable, yet fairly so, as those States have made their 

 woodlands pay ? 



" To bring this about, it is necessary to secure as soon as possible the acerage before it be- 

 comes more expensive, to place it under competent administration, to open up and make 

 accessible the wilderness by a rational system of well-built roads, and inviting, not keeping out 

 the railroads, under such restrictions to be sure as will properly guard the forest against danger 

 from fires, for accessibility is the key-note of practical and profitable forest management." 



12 (F.) 



