874 



Canadian Forestry Journal, December, igi6 



timbia lumber has been made this year 

 to prairie farmers who have been sup- 

 pHed by us with building plans, and 

 tills of material showing them how 

 easily and well they can build barns or 

 •shed's or chicken houses with British 

 'Columbia lumber. And, just as we 

 have done in this case, we hope to co- 

 operate with our lumbermen and get 

 all the best selling methods carried out 

 in this community effort to increase the 

 sale of British Columbia lumber. 



Profits of Advertising. 

 Now take another side of forestry — 

 the protection of standing timber. Lots 

 of people think this just means fighting 

 forest fires, but that is not the point at 

 all- Forest protection means two dis- 

 tinct things. Firstly, it means educat- 

 ing public opinion. Just as a break- 

 fast food company keeps banging away 

 with advertisements, so it is the busi- 

 ness of the forester to educate public 

 opinion to be careful with fire in the 

 woods. People used to think it was a 

 "josh"; these scare-head posters on 

 country roads, these articles in news- 

 papers, these paper cups for campers 

 with "he careful with fire" stamped on 

 them ; these pocket whetstones we have 

 given away to lumberjacks and pre- 

 emptors and all sorts of men who work 

 or camp in the woods. But this pub- 

 licity campaign has proved itself; peo- 

 ple are becoming more careful every 

 year, we notice our fires are caught 

 sooner and cost us less money on an 

 average ; the whole cost of all the pub- 

 licity work responsible for this change 

 has not amounted to the expenditure 

 you may have to make in fighting a 

 single serious fire. 



Brains in the Forest Service. 

 Now this work of education is car- 

 ried on to prevent fires from ever start- 

 ing, as far as possible. The second 

 part of forest protection is simply this : 

 good organization, supervision; the 

 training of the man on the job to use 

 good judgment in handling fires when 

 they start. Good judgment is the one 

 thing needed. There is no line of 

 work in which it is so fatally easy to 

 waste large sums of money as in fight- 

 ing forest fires. It is emergency work, 

 it needs cool judgment and experience. 

 You can easilv waste more money on 



some fire fighting effort than what you 

 save is worth. But mark one thing : 

 you have to realize what is worth sav- 

 ing. I remember an official report of 

 an Eastern Canadian Government once 

 congratulated the country because the 

 bad fires of the year had done no dam- 

 age, "only young growth being de- 

 stroyed," as the report said. Now 

 that is absurd; if you are going to 

 adopt a general principle of letting the 

 young growth burn, good night to the 

 lumbering industry of British Colum- 

 bia before this century is over! But 

 let me repeat again, forestry means the 

 putting of such matters as the fighting 

 of forest fires on a business basis. 



Take another line — the stock taking 

 of forest resources. A fancy line you 

 will say; sort of collecting data and 

 masses of useless information and 

 writing volumes of reports that no one 

 reads. Now we have done a little 

 stock taking in the last five years, but 

 it is not of that description. It has 

 been done mostly for the simplest, im- 

 mediate business reasons. Our men 

 have gone into various forest districts 

 and roughly mapped the places where 

 the good timber is. We have not done 

 it all over the province, for lack of men, 

 an dtime and money. But this rough 

 mapping of valuable timberlands pro- 

 tects them from alienation, shows 

 where timber sales can be made, and 

 helps in the arranging of fire preven- 

 tion work- It is a side of business for- 

 estry. 



Bracing Up the Treasury. 



Now come to forestry as a money 

 maker for the public treastiry, some- 

 thing that makes your taxes far light- 

 er than they would be otherwise ; one- 

 third of every public dollar, two to 

 two-and-a-half million dollars of year- 

 ly revenue already, and going to be a 

 good deal moce than that. That reve- 

 nue has to be worked for, it will not 

 keep coming of itself ; and so forestry 

 here in British Columbia means an or- 

 ganized forest service with an annual 

 turnover about equal to the three larg- 

 est of our lumber manufacturing con- 

 cerns combined. It means a consider- 

 able business in vahiing and selling 

 timber; it means inspecting logging 

 operations to prevent trespass; it 



