34 



corporations and speculators, and to the injury of every other individual 

 of the community, been forcing Canada to find markets abroad for her 

 timber and lumber by the imposition of duties? And are they not even 

 now, with the present condition of things staring them in the face, pre- 

 paring a tariff in which the same obstructions are to be continued to pre- 

 vent this country from giving assistance to mitigate or protract to any 

 ^extent the impending deluge so soon to sweep over your whole country ? 



From the utter indifference and neglect with which this momentous 

 question of the supply and consumption of timber is treated by your 

 people, it might be supposed you could dispense altogether with its use, 

 or that you could reproduce it as easily as raising a crop, or that you 

 would have no difficulty in finding a substitute, but it takes a century to 

 grow a standard pine saw-log, and if there is a country on earth in a po- 

 sition to do without or find a substitute for timber, that country is Great 

 Britain, and yet she increased her wood consumption at an average rate 

 of 10 per cent, a year for the last ten years, and last year, as shown by 

 her trade returns, it-was :*>! per cent, more than in 1875, and the import 

 of that island, not half the area of your State of Texas, and being, as it 

 were, thoroughly finished up throughout its whole extent, showing no 

 further room for improvements, amounted to no less than $100,000,000. 

 But large as that sum is, it is comparatively small to what the United 

 States will soon yearly be called on to supply for its own wood consump- 

 tion, and it is not a luxury that can be thrown aside at will ; it is indis- 

 pensable to the national well-being. 



I know that the impression prevails, and it is often stated by interested 

 parties, that it matters little what is the condition of your supplies, as 

 you have but to look to Canada, where can be found "enough for the 

 most exacting populations of the world for centuries," which is the state- 

 ment usually made by those utterly ignorant of its true condition, or 

 those who do so for a purpose ; and I will here assert from a personal 

 knowledge of most of the timber sections of Canada, and trustworthy 

 reports from others, that we nave not, from the far-off Province of Mani- 

 toba to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, as much pine, spruce, hemlock, oak, 

 ;ash, elm, whitewood, and other commercial woods as would supply the 

 whole consumption of the United States for a period of three years, and 

 the whole accessible pine localities have besides been run over to such 

 an extent for such pine and board wood timber as would pay to ship, 

 that many of our lumberers have been forced to seek for these descrip- 

 tions of wood goods to supply the English demand in your Northwestern 

 timber territories, where they may now be found cutting down on an 

 average three trees to get one stick, and leaving the others, from some 

 trifling defect, to rot in the woods, a waste of this valuable material that 

 you can ill afford. I will further venture the prediction that the near 

 future will reveal such a state of things in regard to the timber question 

 as will bring your Government fully to realize it would have been a wise 

 policy on its part to have paid a bonus for the importation of our lumber, 

 if by such means it could have been saved for the use of your people, 

 than the course it has adopted in driving it away to foreign markets by 

 the imposition of duties to any amount. 



The first of the timber famine Avill begin to be felt in the next three or 

 four years, and will be fully reached throughout the Eastern, Middle, 

 Western, and Northwestern States in the short period of six _or seven 

 years, if the present wasteful course is kept up; and when the pitch pine 

 of the South, a description of wood unsuited for many purposes, is called 

 on to supply the whole consumption, all the building and saw-log timber 

 from the Eastern boundary of Maine to the Rocky Mountains and the 

 Gulf of Mexico will be swept away in as short a time as has passed since 



