190 



THE FORESTER. 



August, 



Moreover if caught by timber agents, the 

 stumpage claimed is less for 'dead' than 

 for green timber." 



As public sentiment is always an im- 

 portant factor in enforcing the law it is 

 interesting to note that though the poorer 

 class of settlers sees nothing to respect in 

 the reserves, the mill operators who are re- 

 sponsible for all the depredations of any 

 magnitude are quite sensible of the nature 

 of their undertakings. A couple of quo- 

 tations will make this clearer than could 

 any but a long explanation. On page 143 

 the author of the report on the White 

 River reserve says : 



" Strangely enough, nearly all illicit lumber- 

 ing and other timber depredations are looked 

 upon by the settlers as blameless ventures. 

 Such operations furnish a limited amount of 

 employment to the poorer classes, and but for 

 occasional sore enmities toward the richer mill 

 operators, the latter are held in the light of ben- 

 efactors. Indeed, by very many, they are con- 

 sidered to be taking only what rightfully be- 

 longs alike to them and all other settlers. The 

 depredator's good name is not thought to be 

 sullied by the veritable theft of timber from the 

 national domain. The spirit of some landless 

 settlers of the poorer class is well illustrated in 

 the following remark made to the writer by a 

 party suspected of stealing dead building logs : 

 ' This timber belongs to us settlers and we're 

 going to get it ! The Government officials can't 

 prevent us, either, with an army ! If they at- 

 tempt to stop us, we'll burn the whole region 

 up.'" 



On the next page we read, however, 

 that : 



"Notwithstanding this moral acquiescence, 

 it is observable that the mill operators resort to 

 various shrewd protective tactics. Almost no 

 sawed timber is left at the mill or anywhere on 

 the reserve. Often the lumber is drawn as fast 

 as it is cut to some point just beyond the boun- 

 dary of the reserve^ whence it is disposed of 

 with less danger of implication. Again, if 

 pounced upon by ' timber agents ' it is held to 



ss criminal to have dead logs on the mill 

 1 than green. The haul of green and dead 



from the forest to the mill yard is, there- 

 fore, .-irranged so that all the green timber is 

 conveniently run through the mill first. 



* One of the speakers at the recent meeting of 

 the Atneric.m l-'orestry Association in New York 

 rted that this method of increasing the sup- 

 ply of convenient and valuable "dead and 

 'loun " timber is also being practiced in Minne- 



" Operators are watchful and suspicious of all 

 strangers. My unexpected arrival in the region 

 of the Coal Creek mill resulted in stopping all 

 cutting, sawing and skidding, and within twelve 

 hours 17 teams were at work hauling away tim- 

 ber accumulated at the mill." 



This is encouraging. It shows that 

 though the members of one class of the 

 reserves' enemies, the lumber thieves, are 

 willing to rely on the settlers for support, 

 they do not also accept ideas of their 

 "rights" from their employees, and are 

 already alive to the nature of their guilt 

 and its possible consequences. 



Much more could be said about these 

 reports, and a great deal also about Mr. 

 Henry Gannett's second paper on the 

 "Forests of Washington" which begins 

 the volume. But many pages are filled 

 with material which, however, important 

 and valuable, will be interesting to only a 

 few ; and enough remarks and quotations 

 have already been made from what re- 

 mains to indicate what the reports and 

 papers show about the general condition 

 the reserves are now in. This condition 

 is typical of thousands of square miles in 

 the mountain regions of the West, and is 

 as bad as it is simply because the people 

 who make laws and those who enforce 

 them, do not realize or do not care. Parts 

 at least of these reports should be read 

 by every congressman and member of a 

 State legislature. 



In the Conservative (Nebraska City) 

 for July 26th appears a letter from Mr. C. 

 D. Robinson, of Pawnee City, about the 

 profits from a 4O-acre plantation of Catalpa 

 and Osage established in 1890. The trees 

 when set out were one year old. The 

 Editor of the Conservative reviews the 

 letter thus: "Estimating the forty-acre 

 tract to be worth $2,000, the labor cost 

 $1,000, the total investment would be 

 $3,000. The market value of the 200,000 

 posts is $20,000. This is what Mr. Rob- 

 inson may sell his posts for and still have 

 his land and the stumps from which to 

 grow more posts and the second growth 

 would mature in about ten or twelve 

 years. The return on the investment is 

 about 45 per cent, simple interest. 



