American Forest Congress 423 



other. I suggested that the licensees should be asked 

 to name the rangers because I wanted to get capable 

 men and to divorce the service from any connection 

 with politics. If the Government had appointed all the 

 rangers I fear we would have had the insinuation that 

 some of them were appointed for political purposes. 

 In order to get rid of that idea once and forever, we 

 said we would allow the licensees, who were of all 

 schools of political thought, to select the men, then 

 we will appoint them and pay half their wages. That 

 system has been approved and expanded and is in 

 force at the present time. During the last year, in 

 the Province of Ontario, we have not had a single forest 

 fire, although thousands of people are moving about 

 through the forests during the summer season. Large 

 numbers of your own countrymen come up to our 

 country during the summer, regarding it as a play- 

 ground because we have the forest there in which they 

 can come in contact with nature and enjoy themselves. 

 Recently we have thought we ought to go a step fur- 

 ther; that we ought to set apart large tracts of land 

 as forest reserves, the timber of which should be cut 

 subject to regulations as to the size of the timber and 

 measurements and everything of that sort, and that the 

 trees to be cut should be marked by rangers appointed 

 by the Government, the timber to be disposed of in 

 the open market from time to time as might be thought 

 proper. We have set apart in the Province of Ontario 

 some 7,000,000 acres of forest reserves, and we have 

 on these 7,000,000 acres probably some 10,000,000,000 

 feet of white pine timber, and in this white pine we 

 think we have one of the most valuable assets that any 

 province or State could have, because there is no 

 property that is more rapidly increasing in value than 

 white pine stumpage. We are using our best efforts 



