44 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



tern of economy " for the production of forest supplies was 

 adopted ; and he said, " Probably none will be, until severe 

 privations are experienced . " Many other speakers and writers 

 in the first decades of last century propagated the idea of a 

 threatened exhaustion of native timber supplies. 



That these earlier propagandists of forest culture received 

 scant attention was due to the fact that times soon chano;ed 

 and conditions changed ; and with these changes the evil day 

 seemed indefinitely postponed, the necessity for forest culture 

 vanished. These changes were mainly ^vrought by the open- 

 ing up of the far west, by extending means of transportation 

 through canals and railroads, and by distributing population, 

 whereby the need for near-by home supplies was overcome ; 

 a continental supply of apparently inexhaustible amount was. 

 brouo^ht into sioht and within reach. 



Only when, after the war of the rebellion, Avith the rapi(? 

 increase in railroad building and in industrial activity, the 

 lumber industry developed into its enormous volume, did 

 the old fear revive. Times had changed again ; we find that 

 forest resources are limited, relatively much more so than 

 was anticipated ; nevertheless, consumption has grown with- 

 out reference to this recognized fact. 



Such a development of industries, such an increase of 

 material civilization, making everybody more comfortable 

 and also more exacting and ambitious, has taken place in the 

 last thirty years, that actually we are using each of us 35 per 

 cent more lumber to-day than we did twenty years ago, the 

 lumber consumption per capita having risen at the rate of 

 li/'2 per cent per annum. 



When we see that the other industrial nations, Avhich, 

 like Germany and France, import a large part, and England 

 importing practically all her requirements, shoAV this same 

 increase in Avood consumption, are we not justified in being 

 alarmed? Have not times chano-cd so that Ave also should 

 change — and that radically — in our attitude towards the 

 subject of rational forest use ? Has not the evil day arrived 

 Avhich Governor Clinton foresaw, and Avhich another, the 

 Rev. Frederic Starr, in 18(35 in an article printed by the 

 United States Department of Agriculture, with almost truly 



