14 NEW BRUNSWICK FORESTRY CONVENTION 



State has no more right to allow its domain to go without proper protection 

 in this respect than an individual has to allow his house to go without 

 insurance against fire. In this Province we have laws on the statute book 

 for the prevention of Forest fires, and fairly good laws, but we must make 

 up our minds that we have got to spend a good deal of money to make 

 these laws effective. A good example has been set by the lumbermen of 

 Westmorland, who. of their own motion, had a Bill passed in this House for 

 the prevention of Forest fires in the County of Westmorland and assumed 

 the burden of carrying out this Act themselves. 



In reading reports of the Canadian Forestry Association 1 was struck 

 with the statement dealing with the protection of the Forests, and how it 

 was possible, with the proper cutting of the timber, to keep the forests so 

 that they would always be a source of wealth, made by a gentleman in 

 Ottawa lost year, that in Saxony, where the State owned and managed 

 some 430,000 acres of lumber lands, in fifty years' time over 200 million dollars 

 worth had come out of that 430,000 acres lumber to the value of over four 

 million dollars a year, and yet today there was a much larger quantity, some 

 twenty per cent, more, of lumber standing on that land than there had been 

 fifty years ago. If on 400,000 acres of land in Saxony 200 millions of 

 dollars of wealth can be obtained in fifty years, it is a simple sum in arith- 

 metic to work out what the potentialities of our wealth are from the 

 6,400,000 acres of Crown Land under license in our Province, not to speak 

 of the land not under license, a portion of which is fit for the growing of 

 trees, and could be made a source of wealth for this country. A mere state- 

 ment of that shows what enormous wealth we have in our Crown Lands, in 

 the 6,400,000 acres under licence at the present time in this Province. And 

 white in this country we have not arrived perhaps at that stage when it is 

 necessary to take the extreme steps that are taken in Germany and Saxony 

 and in the Scandinavian Peninsulas, where every man who cuts down a tree 

 is forced to plant two or three more in its place, yet there is no doubt great 

 good must come of our understanding the conditions that exist in other 

 countries, and of our discussing the questions with regard to the preservation 

 of the Forests, affecting, as they do, that great interest which every man in 

 this country must regard as essential to the future growth and the pros- 

 perity of the country, the lumber interest of the Province of New Brunswick, 

 which has been so potent a factor in its growth and progress in the past. 



Once more, Mr. Chairman, I join with you in extending a cordial 

 greeting to the gentlemen who have come here to attend this Convention. 



