62 



THE FORESTER 



March, 



ever be paid. These lands are reverting 

 to the State for non-payment of taxes 

 as fast as the lumbermen can get rid of 

 them. Active steps are being taken by 

 members of the coming State Legisla- 

 ture and others interested toward the 

 outlining of a plan by which the State 

 shall gradually reforest these millions of 

 acres, and hold the lands as public prop- 

 erty to be lumbered as occasion may 

 require and the State may direct. It is 

 claimed that millions of dollars can be 

 earned by this course, and that the 

 lumbering industry in Minnesota can be 

 continued indefinitely and almost unin- 

 terruptedly. These new lands, if forested 

 at once, will be ready for the axe by the 

 time the present forests are gone, if the 

 young trees on the present timbered 

 lands are preserved and not ruined by 

 the cutting of those now only large 

 enough to make a board. 



"In Europe," he says, "forest lands 

 earn an average yearly of from 27 cents 

 to several dollars per acre, and that 

 Minnesota's abandoned pineries have 

 better soils than most of those of Europe. 

 The State now holds some 800,000 

 acres of these waste lands and it is pro- 

 posed to begin experiments and opera- 

 tions on these within a short time, as soon 

 as legislation and appropriations can be 

 secured." Mr. Andrews makes the very 

 reasonable estimate of 90 cents an acre 

 as a return from these lands, which 

 would mean nearly $3,000,000 a year in 

 revenue to the State, and a far greater 

 income to labor and capital, all of which 

 is now sure to be utterly swept away in 

 a few years, with present methods con- 

 tinued. Lumber Trade Journal. 



Wood-Pulp Industry: 



The wood-pulp bacillus is the enemy of 

 forests, and unless a halt is called in its rav- 

 ages it may almost eat them off the face of the 

 globe. So many things are now made from 

 wood pulp that the demand for the substance, 

 constantly increasing, becomes practically 

 limitless, and however ample the sources of 

 supply may now seem to be, they have a 

 bound and tend to diminution, while the de- 

 mand promises a constant increase. Printing 

 paper alone eats an enormous hole in our na- 



tional forests yearly, and the future extent of 

 that requirement can only be conjectured. 

 The huge procession of railway cars all over 

 the country runs to some extent on paper 

 wheels ; carpenters are beginning to use boards 

 of paper handsomely veined, requiring no 

 planing, twice as durable as the wooden 

 variety, and costing only half the money. The 

 builder is introducing paper bricks showily 

 enameled, which will not burn, and possess 

 many advantages over those of burnt clay. 

 The shipbuilder introduces masts and spars of 

 the same substance, which is likewise used for 

 telegraph and telephone poles and flagstaffs. 

 These are not fanciful experiments, but serious 

 business procedures, justified by the superior 

 utility of the articles so produced. The same 

 quality is claimed for the paper horseshoe 

 recently invented and now extensively used. 



An enumeration of the purposes- for which 

 this surprising protoplasm has come to be em- 

 ployed would stretch into a catalogue, and new 

 ones seem to be discovered every day. They 

 give a sign of its waxing demand on our forest 

 growths, at which the sylvan economist and 

 conservator may look with apprehension, but 

 just at present it is difficult to see in what way 

 he can intervene for their protection. Hum- 

 boldt says that wherever the civilized, earth- 

 tilling, wood-consuming man appears in ar- 

 boreal regions of the globe he provides the 

 conditions for his own extinction by his 

 destruction of forests. His dictum antedates 

 the wood-pulp man, whose appearance certainly 

 does not tend to invalidate it, and, useful as he 

 is, it may in time become necessary to take in 

 hand and impose some kind of restraint upon 

 him. New York Tribune. 



The "sylvan economist and conserva- 

 tor," which, in common parlance, means 

 the professional forester, does not "look 

 with apprehension " at the work of wood- 

 pulp industry nor does he regard it as an 

 enemy of the forests. On the contrary 

 he recognizes that the requirements of 

 new conditions must be met by the adop- 

 tion of new methods and that it is the 

 office of his vocation to provide forest 

 products to meet the necessities of mod- 

 ern civilization. With the sentimental 

 side of the question he has nothing what- 

 ever to do. One thing can be said of 

 the wood-pulp industry, and that is, that 

 it wastes less of the product consumed 

 than most of the timber-using industries. 

 If greater demands for material are to 

 be made upon the forest, its productive 

 capacity should be so increased as to 

 equal such demands. This can only be 

 attained by more intelligent methods of 



