80 CANADIAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION 



very great attention at their hands. We cannot slavishly copy the systems of 

 management adopted by any other country in the world. Our conditions in many 

 respects differ from those of any other country, not only on account of the vast 

 area embraced, with great variety of climate, and consequently of production, but 

 also on account of our system of Government being different in many respects 

 from that of any other country. We have several provinces each administering 

 the products of the public domain within its boundaries as the people of those 

 Provinces think best. We have also the Federal Government possessing a vast 

 territory of wooded land which it administers and it is a truism that the highest 

 wisdom would be to utilize the product of the forest so as to be of the greatest use 

 to the community as a whole. 



Various opinions are entertained as to the systems the Governments are adopt- 

 ing. Some would advocate the right of any citizen obtaining a farm anywhere on 

 the public domain to obtain all the timber on it free. Others will be disposed to 

 view the question differently; they still distinguish between the product which 

 the farmer obtains through his work in sowing the grain and cultivating the land 

 to produce his crop from that of his simply harvesting nature's crop, which 

 he had nothing to do with in the way of producing. I think that 

 the latter is the more logical, and that the products of the mine, the products of 

 the forest, the products of our seas, lakes and rivers belonging to the people as 

 a whole, should not be given up by the Government unreservedly to anyone who 

 desires to appropriate them. Besides, experience has shown us that where timber 

 is conveyed by the Government along with the land in small quantities to farmers, 

 it has not been in any sense to the best .interests of the principles of Forestry or to the 

 best interests of the community as a whole. We have an example of this very close 

 at hand in the State of Michigan, where following the system of government in that 

 country the timber was given to the homesteader. The result was not in a wide 

 distribution of the forest wealth or in the retention of this land by a great number 

 of individuals. It was taken up not for the purpose of farming or even for using the 

 forest products themselves but in order to sell it, often for a very small amount, 

 to large proprietors. In this way the Government parted with all right to pass 

 any regulations regarding the timber, and the people received nothing for the 

 forest product, and to-day vast areas in that state instead of being utilized for 

 agriculture, which was ostentibly the object of their being granted, are neither 

 producing agricultural crops nor timber, but are simply barren wastes. If these areas 

 had been granted as timber lands, especially where they were unsuited for agri- 

 culture, under a long term of lease with stringent regulations, that the timber should 

 not be cut below a certain diameter limit and the ground tax was, if anything, 

 merely nominal, it would have been in the holders' interest to have practiced 

 rational forestry methods in order that he might recut the same area at different 

 periods in the future, and it can scarcely be doubted that if this had been done a 

 large portion of the pineries of that state would to-day be reproducing timber of 

 the same varieties to the great benefit of that district of country. 



I know the prejudice that is being industriously agitated to-day against large 

 corporations, but that question is too large and intricate to engage in, in a paper 

 of this kind. This much may be said, however, the industrial development of the 

 country necessitates the formation of companies with large capital to meet the 

 requirements of the age, and the fact is sometimes lost sight of that much of the 

 money invested in those large corporations is furnished by people of only moderate 

 means. It is impossible to-day, as I have already said, to conduct the lumbering 

 business in the same way as it was done forty or fifty years ago, and there is no 



