426 Proceedings of the 



the present time, adopting forestry methods, would 

 lead to on immediate increase of profits. Forestry is 

 profitable only in the long run, in the future. To 

 discuss its profitableness you must be able to predict 

 what the needs of the future in the use of wood will 

 be, and what the prices are likely to be. 



Now I have, within the past few weeks, occupied 

 myself with this most important question : Will wood 

 prices rise, and will it pay at the present time to spend 

 money in the care of forest properties, or to leave 

 money in the forest properties, not taking all that can 

 be taken at the present time with a view to an increased 

 revenue in the future? This is somewhat of a tech- 

 nical subject, but I believe you will have to deal here 

 with technical subjects in formulating a policy which 

 appeals to the interest of private forest owners. Con- 

 trary to the statement of some statisticians of name and 

 fame, wood prices have been, even in the United States, 

 rising continuously for the last seventy years at the 

 rate of about one and one-half per cent; and at the 

 present time, if you take shorter periods of ten, fifteen 

 or twenty years, you will find that this rate of increase 

 has been very much greater. In the last forty years 

 the industrial nations of the world, such as England, 

 France and Germany, as well as the United States, 

 have increased the wood consumption to a marvelous 

 extent, not according to the number of their population, 

 but an increase per capita consumption. This is a 

 remarkable fact when we consider that stone, iron and 

 steel have taken the place of wood in building materials 

 to a large extent, and coal has replaced it as fuel. So 

 it is impressed upon us that our civilization is con- 

 tinuously dependent upon wood. Hence a supply for 

 the future is one of the requisites of our modern civili- 

 zation. The consideration of the rapid increase in the 



