CANADIAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION 97 



And here it is that the broad problems of colonization and land policy touch 

 the narrower problems which during these two days has brought together for its 

 discussion a small group of devoted patriots, the problem of soil cover, of 

 forest preservation, the forestry problem. It is in this problem more particularly 

 that I am expected to interest you. 



If you are the active citizens that your membership in this Club stamps you to 

 be, you must, of course, have become familiar with the arguments which have been 

 advanced for the last quarter-century, namely ever since in 1882, in this very city, 

 the first American Forestry Congress met the arguments for a reform in the 

 manner of the treatment of your timber resources. 



Every possible argument has been brought forward I could not formulate 

 any new one and these arguments have been reiterated in the public prints over 

 and over again, so that I should feel possitively inane were I to repeat them before 

 such an intelligent audience. All I propose to do is to accentuate those aspects of 

 the question which come nearest to forming a part of the broader problem of a 

 proper land policy. 



A few weeks ago I addressed the Canadian Club of Toronto on this same sub- 

 ject and there I laid stress on the material value of our timber wealth. I pointed 

 out that, relatively speaking, the timber area the area of commercial timber of 

 Canada is small, that the saw mill capacity of the United States would suffice to get 

 rid of the entire estimated log timber supply of Canada in less than fifteen years. 



But within these last few weeks, the other side of the forestry question, namely 

 the relation of forest cover to soil and water conditions, has impressed itself on me 

 as in the end the much more important, the more pressing, and of much more 

 moment than the material considerations. 



While the rapid and uneconomical destruction of our timber wealth must 

 appear foolish and prejudicial to the material prosperity of the country, after all 

 we can perhaps exist without wood, at least we could get along with very much less 

 than we now use, substituting iron, stone, concrete; and perhaps there is still time 

 to reproduce what we need before the virgin supplies are exhausted. Again, you 

 must have heard a good deal of talk about the enormous inroads which the paper 

 pulp industry is making upon your spruce woods, and that the United States 

 manufacturers have fixed their eyes upon your vast supplies of that description to 

 feed their mills. It should be patent to every sane man that now is the time to 

 carefully consider the propriety of so managing this valuable resource that not only 

 for the present but for all future it yield the greatest profit to the country that 

 holds it. 



There is no question that Canada, if she adopt now a wise forest policy, can 



