220 REPORT OF THE No. 3 



Rates of Dues too Low. 



"I regard the present rates charged by the Crown for timber, us gen- 

 erally much too low, and believing that an increase would fall, not on the 

 trade, but on the consumer, I suggest an immediate and considerable 

 advance, which, if it should have the effect of causing greater attention to 

 be given to the manufacture of sawn lumber, would tend to the more rapid 

 settlement and prosperity of the great Ottawa Valley. Undoubtedly the 

 increase of our lumber trade with the United States will be in the direc- 

 tion of sawn lumber, and it fully justifies the Government in seeking to 

 obtain a price commensurate with the increased value of the timber." 



An Ojjicial View. 



Mr. Spragge, Chief Clerk of the Crown Lands Department, in a state- 

 ment prepared for the committee, as to the cost of managing the public 

 domain, with suggestions for changes in the direction of efficiency . and 

 economy, thus dealt with the question : 



''There is yet a subject to which I will take leave to allude, entitled, I 

 think, to special attention. Those who have taken a real interest in the 

 timber and lumber trade of Canada will be in a position, provided they have 

 given due attention to the subject, to weigh the relative advantages of 

 shipping the products of our forests in the form of squared timber, or in the 

 more valuable and prepared form of deals and other sawed stuff. In per- 

 ambulating land where timber has been made, as the expression goes, it 

 is impossible to be otherwise than struck with the enormous amount of 

 valuable wood which the axeman separates from the stick of timber, which, 

 by the process of squaring, he is fitting for exportation, and which remains 

 where it was detached from the square piece, and in process of time uselessly 

 rots upon the ground. A bend in the tree or any small defect some distance 

 up the trunk consigns all abovie one or the other to the same useless destiny 

 of rotting upon the ground, which befalls the blocks which the axeman 

 cleaves off, in reducing the round trunk to a square, and all but the superior 

 trees and those which will make a piece of timber of a given length and 

 square, remain unused. 



"In cutting the short saw logs intended to be worked into deals, and 

 other stuff manufactured in a saw mill, it is evident that the proportion 

 of each tree, which can be converted into an article of export, may be estim- 

 ated at fully three-fourths more than could be rendered available for market 

 by making the tree into hewn timber, and many trees rejected as unfit lor 

 timber, would cut up into saw logs, were the land divested of its timber 

 trees for that purpose, instead of the other, — and I think it may be reason- 

 ably computed that an acre of white pine would bring back to the Province, 

 when converted into deals and other sawed stuff, a return three-fold greater 

 than if exported as hewn timber. With this of course the superior value of 

 the cubic foot of sawn timber would have something to do. And again, it 

 should be kept In view, the more extended employment conferred upon the 

 laboring population in preparing for the foreign market the cargo of the 

 ship freighted with sawn stuff, beyond that expended upon the freight of 

 the timber-laden ship. Add to this the employment that mills afford to 

 artizans, and the advantage to the farmer resulting from the greater home 

 consumption of produce, induced by one system of export rather than the 

 other; and sound reasons deducible from the various circumstances com- 

 bined, will be found for fostering and encouraging the shipment of the pro- 



