Canadian Forestry Journal, December, igrd 



873 



A Forest Service That Booms Business 



How British Columbians Organization Seeks New Markets 

 as Shortest Road to Successful Conservation 



By M. A. Grainger, 

 Acting Chief Forester of British Columbia. 



(From an Address Delivered Before the Rotary Club, Victoria, Nov. ~6, 1916.) 



When we started the Forest Service 

 in British Columbia many good people, 

 and especially lumbermen and business 

 men connected with the industry, 

 shook their heads very doubtfully. '"The 

 logging and sawmill industries of the 

 Province are business propositions," 

 they said, "commercial propositions, 

 which can only be carried on by busi- 

 ness men in a practical biisiness way." 

 That was five years ago, and since then 

 we have carried on some forestry in 

 British Columbia, and I think people 

 generally have a better notion of what 

 forestry. Fll tell you some of the 

 forms forestry has taken here. 



Take selling lumber; that is forestry. 

 Go through these enormous timber- 

 lands of ours and size up the situation. 

 What do you find? You find this: 

 four-fifths of the annual growth, four- 

 fifths of the annual forest income, that 

 Nature asks us every year to turn into 

 dollars, is wasted. We don't use it ; 

 we take our mere 30 million dollars 

 from the woods and leave the other 

 four-fifths of one's lumbering prosper- 

 ity behind. A\'hy? Just because the 

 markets for British Columbia lumber 

 are insufficient. A\'hat is the remedy? 

 Obviously, bigger markets and more' of 

 them. Get these markets and this ap- 

 palling waste of raw material will be 

 stopped. Market extension means true 

 forest conservation ; and that is one 

 reason why increasing the markets for 

 British Columbia lumber is true fores- 

 try and why the forest servoce carries 

 on its market work, co-operating with 

 our lumbermen in every way it can. 

 You are familiar enough with the 



methods we employ. They are the 

 usual publicity methods, advertise- 

 ments in papers and periodicals, ex- 

 hibits, and all that sort of thinsf. 

 But the essential part of the work is 

 the punch it possesses, and the punch 

 is delivered by active, persistent, skil- 

 ful, personal Mork by the man on the 

 job. 



Substitutes and Advertising. 

 You must know it is not merely a 

 question of finding new markets for 

 British Columbia lumber to be sold in; 

 it is a question of protecting the mar- 

 kets we already have. A\'here would 

 the province be if any serious propor- 

 tion of its existing lumber business 

 were wiped out? It could not happen, 

 you will say ; people have got to buy 

 lumber : it is a staple article like wheat. 

 Well, they have been carrying on a 

 searching investigation into the lumber 

 trade of the United States, and this is 

 what they have found as a result — 

 just one-fifth of the entire lumber mar- 

 ket that existed eight years ago has 

 been wiped out. Wiped out by substi- 

 tutes; steel, concrete, bricks, patent 

 roofing, asphalt paving: wiped out in 

 some cases because the substitute was 

 the better article, but in far too many 

 cases simply because the makers of sub- 

 stitutes used modern sellino- methods 

 and the lumbering industry did not. 

 There is no better selling method than 

 giving good service to the consumer : 

 helping him to use your material and 

 to get the best value out of it. That is 

 the method we have adopted in this 

 business forestry, or forestry business, 

 of ours. Manv a sale of British Col- 



