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immity is deeply interested. Not satisfied with the huvoc they an- mak- 

 ing to keep their own markets continually largely overstocked, they have 

 also made extensive preparations by fitting up their mills for the manu- 

 facture of deals, to drive, as their lumber papers boast, they will, the 

 Canadian supply out of the Ihitish markets, and they are besides at work 

 using up the best of their white pine in the manufacture of boardwood 

 and square timber for the same markets, a course most destructive to the 

 forests. In fact, lighting the candle at both ends would fail to fitly de- 

 scribe the utter recklessness and folly of their proceedings, they are- 

 casting it bodily into the fire. 



We have theories and speculations on the forests as influencing the 

 rain-fall, and their value as reservoirs to keep up a supply of water for 

 your rivers, water-courses, and canals, and afford power for machinery, 

 but who has given consideration to the consequences to your whole 

 country of a dearth of timber? Who of your statesmen has given his 

 mind to think on its effects on the 173,450 industrial establishments, and 

 the 1,093,202 operatives, who, as shown by your census returns, as far 

 back as 1870, are engaged therein, providing your people with the finished 

 wood materials so indispensable to their well being? Who of the dele- 

 gations from the Northwestern timber sections, that are now praying 

 Congress to prevent Canada from giving any assistance to prolong the 

 life of these industries, has taken into account the consequences of a 

 failure in their timber supply on the settlement of your boundless, tree- 

 less prairie country, or the deprivations it will entail on its inhabitants, 

 and the millions who are to make it their home? Who of your whole 

 people has given himself the trouble to understand that it would require 

 you to raise $500,000,000 to send abroad to purchase an amount of lum- 

 ber equal to your present consumption for a single year, or that all the 

 tonnage of the whole world would fall far short of being able to freight 

 it from your Pacific Territories to your Atlantic seaboard? The aggre- 

 gated freighting capacity of the world is only about 18,000,000 of tons, 

 while the 12, 755,000,000* feet of lumber shown by your census returns of 

 1870 to have been sawn in 1869 would make a tonnage of 21,000,000, from 

 which it will be seen that, without taking into account the thousands of 

 millions of shingles and the millions of feet of timber consumed at the 

 same time, there is not tonnage enough in existence to freight that single 

 item of sawn lumber alone around Cape Horn, and how inadequate it 

 would be to meet the shipping requirements for the whole consumption 

 of all kinds of building timber and wood for other industrial purposes of 

 the present day, and how much more so by the time your present stock 

 is exhausted, with so many more millions of consumers to be supplied. 

 And what have your authorities been doing to meet this state of things? 

 Have' they been making provision to keep up the supply by tree-plant- 

 ing, as in Northern Europe? Have they been husbanding their forest 

 wealth and preserving it from spoil and waste 1 ? On the contrary, have 

 they not been prodigal in their efforts to get rid of it by making presents 

 of it to corporations and disposing of it for a trifle of its value to indi- 

 vidual speculators one of whom, in the West, boasting that he owns 

 three-fifths of the, cork pine in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, and 

 another in the East, claiming to blithe owner of over 500,000 acres of 

 land selected for its timber value? Have they not been standing quietly 

 by looking on at the extensive robberies committed on the public domain 

 that have been carried on for years in the South and Northwest, by which 

 not only the home-markets have been kept largely overstocked, to the 

 injury of all legitimate operators, but the foreign markets as well have 

 been kept glutted to Mich an extent that even the plunderers themselves 

 received nothing for the timber, and but little for tin,' labor expended in 

 preparing it for market? And have they not. for the sole benefit of these. 



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