A Canadian Forest Policy. 43 



Not only is it a great national duty born of necessity — the 

 necessities of the future— that Canada care for her forests, 

 but it will inevitably prove a highly remunerative business 

 proposition. 



Forest Situation in North America. 



North America to-day cuts three-fifths and consumes more 

 than one-half of the total lumber production of the whole world. 

 This prodigious consumption is very rapidly increasing both on 

 account of an increase in the per capita consumption and the 

 consuming population. There can be no manner of doubt but 

 that the present annual cut together with that destroyed by 

 fire vastly exceeds the net annual production by growth. In 

 other words a wood famine in North America is already in 

 sight. I was asked the other day when it was due to strike. 

 I replied that as near as I could interpret the signs of the times, 

 the year 1900 would be about right, and that the pressure of 

 prices was likely to become increasingly burdensome from decade 

 to decade until the famine would be unanimously admitted. 

 I understand that many purchasers of lumber are already ad- 

 mitting it. 



Canada's Advantageous Position. 



Canada will, if she be wise, be more interested in this wood 

 famine as a seller than as a purchaser, and herein lies the pos- 

 sibihties of a great and ever growing revenue from her public 

 forest lands. 



The Canadian forests, which form beyond question the 

 world's greatest remaining reserve of coniferous timber, form 

 a band across the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific 

 bordering the richest farming and manufacturing area in the 

 whole world. T?ie population of the consuming area tributary 

 to our forests has increased four-fold during the last half century, 

 but its wood consumption has increased ten-fold. This mar- 

 vellous increase in the use of forest products has already es- 

 tablished stumpage prices which put national wood culture on 

 a satisfactory financial basis from the standpoint of revenue 

 alone. It should not be forgotten that the rise in prices which 

 makes forestry a business proposition has come about in the 

 face of an exploitation of the forests on both private and public 

 lands such as was never seen elsewhere in the history of lumbering 

 and cannot be again repeated in North America nor on any 

 other continent. 



The territorv tributary to our Canadian forests which in- 

 creased its wood consumption ten-fold during the past half 

 century is to a very large extent merely on the threshold of its 

 industrial development. Nothing is more certain than that 



