26 UNITED STATES FOREST POLICY 



forest conservation. It is even true that the period during which they 

 were being created, 1817 to 1858, was a period when destruction 

 of timber was going on with least opposition from conservation forces. 

 There had been, as already seen, some interest in timber preservation 

 in the colonial period, and later, but with the rapid growth of the 

 country, the development of new means of transportation, and with 

 the use of coal as fuel, the apprehensions regarding timber supplies 

 seem almost to have vanished. 



Between 1820 and 1870, the population more than quadrupled; a 

 vast number of farms were carved out of the forest, the timber, in the 

 absence of a ready market, being largely burned. "Pines and oaks were 

 remorselessly felled, and every settlement showed what Flint called a 

 'Kentucky outline of dead trees and huge logs lying on all sides in the 

 fields.' Underbrush was fired with wanton carelessness, and thousands 

 of acres of valuable timber went up in smoke." Hunters sometimes 

 fired the woods to drive the game into the open. Lumbering became 

 more of a commercial business, with larger mills operating. In 1870, 

 there were in the United States 26,945 lumber manufacturing estab- 

 lishments, employing 163,637 hands, who, using capital aggregating 

 $161,500,273, produced a total product valued at $252,339,029— a 

 greater product than any other manufacturing industry except flour- 

 ing and grist mills. All this indicates a very effective exploitation of 

 the country's timber resources.^** 



EARLY CONSERVATION SENTIMENT 



A few warning voices protested against forest destruction, even 

 during this period. As early as 1819, the French naturalist, the 

 younger Michaux, in his work on "The North American Sylva," spoke 

 warningly of the rapid destruction of trees. "In America," he said, 

 "neither the Federal Government nor the several states have reserved 

 forests. An alarming destruction of the trees proper for building has 

 been the consequence, an evil which is increasing and which will con- 

 tinue to increase with the increase of population. The effect is already 



16 Coman, "Economic Beginnings of the Far West," II, 50: Fernow, "Economics 

 of Forestry," 371: Flint, "Recollections of the Last Ten Years," 232: Levering, 

 "Historic Indiana," 480: Trollope, "Domestic Manners of the Americans," 23: 

 Proceedings, Am. Forestry Assoc, 1894-95-96, 81: Thwaites, "Early Western 

 Travels," III, 327. 



