CANADIAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION 125 



nonsense. It is true that you can return to a spruce district and cut it every 

 ten years; but I think in about 30 or 40 years you would get down to a 

 mighty small size. (Applause.) No, the true situation is this : That not only 

 Canada, but the whole world is near the exhaustion of the supply of its timber 

 resources. (Applause.) And this question is not only a question for Canada, 

 but it is for the world. I am not surprised that our neighbors to the south 

 are very much aroused over 'the situation, for they clearly realize the fact 

 that they are getting very near the exhaustion of their timber supply. 

 (Applause.) We also have been prodigal; so far as the conservation of our 

 forests is concerned, that is truei. We have been careless in years gone by, 

 both in the operations of cutting in the woods and as to the prevention of 

 fires. If, however, fires had been excluded from our forests, the cutting by 

 the lumbermen would have been so small that in the timber areas you would 

 not have noticed that they had been cutting at all. Now, that is a fact. 

 The statement was made by several speakers at Washington, and I cor- 

 robate it, that the destruction by fire in the past has been twenty times as 

 great as has been the exhaustion of the forest by the cutting of the lumber- 

 men. Now, a good deal was said this morning about what education may 

 accomplish in the conservation of the forests that we have remaining, and 

 also as to reforestation. As to that I will tell you and tell you very 

 frankly that all the education that is necessary for the preservation of the 

 forests as they now exist, is already known to the Canadian people. But let 

 the education of the younger classes that are growing up, go on as to 

 methods of producing timber upon their farms and beautifying them. Let 

 the other education go on if you will, but I will tell you right here that the 

 only requisite is to get the governments of the Dominion and the various 

 Provinces to co-operate with the men who are at present, and will continue 

 to be, the salvation of the forests if they are only permitted to conserve the 

 forests the practical, sound lumbermen. (Hear! hear! and applause.) 

 Now, when I say that I reflect on no one. But do you know where it goes 

 to? It sounds parliamentary to say that it is the various governments, but 

 it is not at all; it is the people of Canada. (Hear ! hear !) It is the Canadian 

 people speaking through their representatives, that is what it is. And what 

 are they doing, and what are the lumbermen doing? What is the position 

 of the lumbermen? Whose selfish interest is it to preserve the forest? It 

 is the lumberman's. There is a class of lumbermen, however, who have no 

 such interest, and that is, the lumbermen who have no investment the lum- 

 bermen who buy a little bit of a limit, or who steal from the Crown and from 

 other lumbermen, and go on destroying the forests; and that is going on all 

 over Canada. (Hear ! hear ! and applause.) Last autumn, sixty lots were sold 

 out of one of our limits one night in a house that was not the house of a 

 Crown Land Agent. What does the legitimate lumberman do? He embarks 

 in a business requiring a very large capital; he builds mills and docks, 

 improves the streams, builds booms, and goes to enormous expense. He goes 

 to the Crown Lands Department when limits are to be put up for auction, 

 and pays enormous prices for them ; and the very next day, by the insidious 



