192 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



tion of gold in California from 1848 to 1890 was 

 $1,348,000,000. The lumber trade of the nation for 

 1890 was $1,135,000,000, lacking but $200,000,000 of 

 the entire volume of gold produced in California, which 

 has been the gold mine of the world during all these 

 fifty years. Let me give another illustration. All the 

 products of the soil, including oil, gold and iron 

 everything of that kind in 1895 was $540,000,000, with 

 a wheat crop of $400,000,000. There you have a total 

 of $940,000,000 for the products of the soil against 

 $1,135,000,000 for the products of the forests. I claim 

 that lumber is the productive factor in the wealth of 

 the nation. 



Up to about 1870 the lumber business was transacted 

 by the manufacturer and the wholesaler at leading deep 

 water centers, and by but few retail yards. When I 

 took my first clerkship in New Haven, Conn., in 1874, our 

 lumber supplies came from Maine and afterwards from 

 Albany and the Susquehanna at Fort Deposit. Then 

 a part of the manufacturers drifted west, and in 1852 

 purchased timber and manufactured it in the southern 

 part of Canada. Gradually the production has ex- 

 tended westward. We had originally in Michigan not 

 fewer than 300,000,000,000 feet of white pine, of which 

 we had cut 165,000,000,000 feet up to 1897, with less 

 than two billion feet left in that year by reason of 

 forest fires and other destructive influences. The total 

 production in the northwest to 1897, in Michigan 

 Wisconsin and Minnesota, was 333,000,000,000 feet. 

 These are figures that are representative of the immen- 

 sity of the lumber business. This is a billion dollar 

 country as far as its finances are concerned. It is 

 much more than a billion foot country to the lumber- 

 men. This lumber has been utilized by the railroads 

 and we have built the nation from the forests of the 



