mills are so short of spruce that they are moving into Canada, and if 

 it is true that the Canadian authorities report that they are finding out 

 that they have very much less spruce than they thought, and if it takes 

 at least 100 years to make sawlogs and some 50 years to make good 

 pulp wood, it might seem advisable to do a little something in the way 

 of starting new forests in the fairly near future, as it were. But one 

 should go rat'her slow with radical innovations, of course, and look be- 

 fore he leaps and not do anything foolish and not get run off his feet by 

 sentimental considerations, and be calm and take it easy and rather 

 look out for log-haired theorists and that is just what we have been 

 doing. 



PINE NEARLY OFF MARKET. 



While we have been taking it easy the undisputed fact has developed 

 that hemlock lumber costs around $60 a thousand feet in Michigan and 

 that white pine is practically off trie market; that Michigan has more 

 than 10,000,000 acres of idle former forest land and a constantly grow- 

 ing freight bill on imported lumber; that the pulp mills are moving to 

 Canada; that we are the most generous users of forest products in the 

 world; that France and Germany have for centuries kept about a fourth 

 of their entire land area in productive forests and still have been forced 

 to import more and more timber and that, within 50 years, in spite of 

 anything we can now do, we shall be down to a per capita consumption 

 of timber no greater than that to which France and Germany have be- 

 come adjusted through many centuries and with which they are barely 

 able to maintain their industries. 



Really, the only question is: Will it take hemlock lumber at $100 a 

 thousand feet and news print at 10 cents a pound to get us started? 

 Nothing now can prevent such prices except the starting of new for- 

 ests which can come into maturity so as to fill the great timber deficit 

 which will be evident enough within 50 years. 



WARNING RIDICULED. 



There is nothing at all new about all these things. Thirty-five years 

 ago Dr. Spaulding, at the University of Michigan, had it figured out 

 that it would be well to keep Michigan's pine lands at work. He was 

 laughed at. Practical people, especially the lumbermen, informed him 

 that there was "enough pine in Michigan to last forever" and believed 

 it, too. Twenty years ago Charles Garfield, of Grand Rapids, saw 

 what was coming and tried to get something dpne, and was laughed 

 at. Practical people, especially the lumbermen, stated that it was a 

 well-known fact that "pine would not follow pine." Fifteen years ago 

 Prof. Roth told the state officials that if they would let him run the 

 tax-reverted state lands he would make them pay and could build them 

 up into properties which would yield a fair rate of interest on a valua- 

 tion of $50 an acre. For this he was called names and some of the 

 newspapers had a lot of fun about it print paper then being easy to 

 get and not worth 4 cents a pound. 



NOTHING BEING DONE. 



So things have run along- in the good old way and now we are 

 caught short, and good old Michigan has a third of her acres out of 

 a job and getting poorer, year by year. And still nobody is doing 

 much of anything about it all. It's just as well to be practical, you 

 know. 



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