5IC Proceedings of the 



subject, and to encourage other railroads to do like- 

 wise ; to express, further, the willingness and intention 

 of our company to cooperate on reasonable lines with 

 the Federal Government for better forest methods and 

 wood treatment, and to emphasize the importance to 

 many large interests and to railroad business particu- 

 larly, of being less wasteful and prodigal with the 

 wooden materials used in commercial enterprises in 

 the United States. 



The first great business directly dependent upon the 

 forest is that of the lumberman ; there is probably in- 

 vested in logging camps, saw mills, planing mills and 

 other enterprises incident to producing forest products 

 in the rough, over $1,000,000,000. Upon this great 

 business, employing many men, and paying out mil- 

 lions annually in wages, depend in turn very many 

 manufacturing enterprises scattered from one end of 

 the United States to the other ; depend the wood pulp 

 and paper business of the country ; depend in part the 

 successful prosecution of many mining enterprises. 



The transportation business is dependent upon the 

 success of these commercial enterprises, and they in 

 turn are dependent upon a safe, efficient, prompt, and 

 economical system of transportation. 



Many of the manufacturing interests will be slack- 

 ened, depressed, and perhaps stopped entirely, unless 

 steps are taken to use to the best advantage the forests 

 we now have, and to arrange to reproduce them for 

 use in the future. 



The railroads represent in round figures an invest- 

 ment of about $13,000,000,000. They collect and dis- 

 bursement annually about $2,000,000,000, of which 

 $800,000,000 goes directly to labor. They carry in a 

 year 21,000,000,000 passengers one mile; they trans- 

 port in a year 180,000,000,000 tons of freight one mile 



