Canadian Forcsitry JournaL Jnn< , 1915 101 



Sweden's Lesson for Manitoba 



That Manitoba is destined some day to produce enormous quantities of timber, creating 

 hundreds of new industries and advancing the prosperity of the Province and Dominion has 

 long been the belief of practical foresters. There is no conflict in this belief with the cause 

 of agriculture. The forest engineer is laying no weird plot to extinguish wheat and stock 

 raising with stands of timber. All he seeks is to turn the forest areas to the highest ac- 

 count, to compel them to produce revenues to the people of Manitoba ten or twenty times in 

 excess of the jiresent sums, and to hitch the same intelligence to forest management that 

 now dis^tinguishes the farmer and his oat field. Although most of us have thought of Mani- 

 toba as a 'prairie province' given over to field crops, it has always had a considerable area 

 of forest and by the recent extensions of the boundaries large territories have been adiled 

 which are almost entirely forested land. 



MANITOBA AND SWEDEN. 



Can these valuable sources of supply for the world-wide commerce in wood manufactures 

 be turned to such account as to duplicate some day the returns from agriculture? Why not? 

 askeil Mr. H. IT. Campbell, Dominion Director of Forestry, and he proceeded to draw a strik- 

 ing comparison with Sweden, a northern country with similar conditions of soil and climate. 

 While the population of Sweden (5,600,000) is more than ten times that of Manitoba, the 

 total area of the latter is 77,000 square miles greater, with a land area exceeding that of 

 Sweden by 47,000,OOP acres. 



In 1911, Manitoba's 103 mills accounted for a lumber cut of 8,957,500 cubic feet. The 

 number of Swedish wood-working industries, by the last statistics, is 1,528, and the timber 

 output 1,020,000,000 cubic feet; the mills afford employment to 56,424 people. Against 

 Manitoba's 2,415,000 acres of forest reserves, directed by the Dominion Forestry Branch, 

 Sweden's government reserves are 21,200,000 acres (90 per cent of which is forested) and 

 the net revenue therefrom is $2,122,625. A staff of 971 men is enq^loyed, of whom 230 are 

 technically trained. 



HEAVY EXPENDITURES BEQVIRED. 



"Sweden has probably the advantage of Manitoba in having bettor drainage in some of 

 the northern areas and in having a more extended sea-coast, with quicker and cheaper access 

 to long established markets, but I cannot see that other conditions exist that give Sweden an 

 advantage over Manitoba if the forest areas were in as good condition. This they are not at 

 |)resent, nor will they be for a long time to come, and it will require a large expenditure on 

 protection and improvements without regard to revenue during that time, to bring the forests 

 into good condition and to i)roduce a revenue that will more than ollsft the expenditure. 

 L'nder the administration of the federal government the forests have been allowed to get into 

 such an unsatisfactory condition and the federal government should make the necessary ex- 

 penditure from its large revenues to place such a great natural resource, and so important 

 to the prosperity of the province and of the whole country in a condition of permanent secur- 

 ity and producing power so that it may regularly and continuously produce a supply for the 

 domestic needs of the population, a revenue for the State and the raw materials for in- 

 dustries. 



"The investigations we have made of the rate of growth of timber in the province of 

 Manitoba compare favourably with the rates of growth in Kuroj^ean countries, such as Ger- 

 many, France and Sweden, where forestry is being practised profitably. The rotation, or 

 the period required for maturing a crop of trees from seed, in Germany is with spruce and 

 pine from 60 to 80 years. In Sweden the rotation is 60 to 80 years for pulpwood and 100 to 

 120 years for lumVier. The investigations of rates of growth of spruce and pine so far as 

 they have been carried out here indicate that on ordinary well drained soil the period of 

 rotation might be within similar limits." 



