ECONOMIC SOLUTIONS 103 



companies material for freight to the extent of 

 tons. If the land were used for agricultural purposes 

 it would take the crops for fifty years to equal this. 

 In marketing this crop of timber there would be spent 

 in wages only over five dollars per thousand feet, or 

 $125 per acre ; and the Government would receive fifty 

 cents per thousand feet, or $12.50 per acre as royalty. 

 How many years of cultivation for agricultural pur- 

 poses would it take to produce the same result ?"* " To 

 cite another case of financial result of forest manage- 

 ment, I may refer to waste-land planting in France, 

 which was carried on with State aid by municipalities 

 and private enterprise. Here, in the last sixty years, 

 2,300,000 acres of absolute waste land of various 

 descriptions were reclaimed by forest planting at a 

 total cost of $15,000,000. These areas are now esti- 

 mated to be worth $135,000,000, and furnish annual 

 crops valued at $10,000,000, or, in other words, yield 

 67 per cent, on the initial outlay."! When waste land 

 is allowed to return to forest without care the result is 

 scrub growth. The forest of silviculture is as different 

 from such woods as are the fields of the College at Ste. 

 Anne from those of the Syrian peasant. Let me cite 

 one other example of actual attainment, from Massa- 

 chusetts. Three-year-old plants of Norway spruce 

 were set out in 1878 on hillsides, in poor sandy soil, 

 unfit for cultivation, which was yielding less than fifty 

 cents per acre yearly as pasture. The land cost the 

 State five dollars per acre. In 1910 four average trees 

 were cut for wood-pulp. They ran from 56.7 to 71.8 



* John Hendry, Commission of Conservation. T ~. p. 93. 

 t Dr. B. E. Fernow. The same, I, p. 32. 



