16 Canadian Forestry Journal. 



the farmer, without the forest nearby either on his own farm 

 or within distance of reasonable railroad transportation, ab- 

 solutely cannot prosecute his industry. (Applause.) We have 

 reached the point where agriculture depends directly and 

 immediately on the preservation of our forests. Just across 

 the line, in Michigan, we have a most terrible example of the 

 expense and loss and lack of productiveness the destruction 

 of the forest on non-agricultural lands brings to pass. We may 

 assume, then, that the fundamental industry of your great coun- 

 try and my great country is absolutely impossible in the absence 

 of forest preservation. Now, the same thing is literally true of 

 mining. We may say that when wood is gone as fuel we will 

 burn coal. But it is obvious, on a moment's consideration, that 

 we cannot get the coal in the absence of the forest, because 

 mining is impossible without vast supplies of timber. Even 

 steel, on which this age is said to be based, could not be won 

 from the ground unless the forest gave the means to do it. Nor 

 can steel replace the wood — in this sense, that the larger the 

 amount of iron and steel used in construction the more iron and 

 steel replace wood in steamboats, railroad cars and buildings, 

 so much the larger is the total quantity of wood used in con- 

 struction of that kind. The total consumption of wood keeps 

 pace with the increase in the use of substitutes. We cannot 

 build railroads, nor maintain them, without the forest. We 

 figure that, if a tree were growing at the end of every railroad tie 

 in every railroad in the United States, we should be able barely 

 to keep these ties sound in the track, making no allowance for 

 any increase in mileage, which increase is going on so rapidly. 

 The annual consumption of ties on steam and electric rail- 

 roads in the United States closely approaches 150,000,000 per 

 annum, an enormous sum, the contribution of the forest to trans- 

 portation and without which transportation would be impossible. 

 The average citizen, the merchant, or call him by whatever 

 name his profession requires depends in his daily Hfe at every 

 point on the timber supply. And I repeat it, for it stands to 

 me in a vital place in the consideration of this whole matter, that 

 wood is just as necessary to us in this day as a material base 

 for our civilization as any other material ; and if we are to pre- 

 serve our prosperity, if we are to grow — and growth is the one 

 thing that every citizen of Canada and of the United States looks 

 forward to for his country — we must preserve our forests. That 

 stands in the first place (applause). 



Now, we on our side of the line have taken up this question, 

 too late it is true — far too late. But we have been enabled by 

 the greater number of our population for the time being to go 

 ahead somewhat more rapidly than you have been able to do. 

 Until a recent time you have been occupied with the actual 

 subduing of the country, the vast heritage, that lies before you. 



