'o&n T.effiember large towns lighted with oil lamps ; the first stfeam vessel tim- 

 idly creeping along our shores, or up our rivers ; and the hardly credited ru- 

 mor of a steam-engine on a tramway i But the process of learning will not 

 be slow, and neither easy nor pleasant. To be sure, as coal becomes scarcer 

 iand d«arer, we shall learn eeonomy. We shall warm our houses more scien- 

 tifically and improve our machinery. But in the meanwhile our de- 

 scendants will witness another .process equally exhaustive ; the population 

 will follow coal wherever it is found, whether on foreign or colonial soil. 

 Our manufacturers will be beaten by those who then have this advantage over 

 us, and the working; classes will accept the m-vitation of the master that bids 

 -the highest. That is what they must do fer it is the law of existence. It is 

 not easy, or at all possible to forecast any ^joint at whicii the various conflict- 

 ing causes may fix the future of English labor, but we may as well expect a 

 ■large populatioa in Salisbury Plain, as a Manchester, a Liverpool, a Shefiield, 

 a Birmi-ngham m<Aeu2 coal and (^teap coal too!" 



This gloomy picture, though prophetic, is not overdrawn ; and represents a 

 •country without coal or wood, such as Wisconsin may become without the 

 •fostering care of the people ishall be extended to our forest trees. These 

 alone can save the people of the state to the state. Cut away our forests, 

 ■denude the state, and the .years are iiot distant when tjie agriculture -of 

 the state Will change to pasturage and stock raising ; because ■the winds 

 which are already more severe than the winter wheat can bear, will become 

 too severe for the spring crops ; then there will be too little fuel to keep the 

 ■50 inhabitants on each square mile ot the southern counties warm and cook 

 their food. Men must give place to oxen and sheep. Public parks and 

 gardens, school houses, manufactories, stores and depots, will be converted 

 into sheep-pens, cattle stalls and hay barns. The small farm with its neat 

 house, orchard and garden, its fields of yellow grain and tall corn, — Uie 

 liome of the happy fatoily, will become part of a cattle range, for these -alone 

 can retain a foothold, "until that other more distant day shall come when the 

 winds and droughts shall teduce the plains of Wisconsin to the condition of 

 a.sia Minor-. Trees albne can save us from such -a fate. 



HOW WOOD EFFECTS FREIGHTS. 



Elsewhere has been shown the amount of wood consumed by "the railroids 

 'of the state. The first construction of the roads, consumed for slee'pers 

 ••about 150 cwds of wood to the mile, worth as mere Wood, at present prl&s, 

 §6 per cord, or $900 But these slfeepers have been, and m'ust be again, Ve- 

 "placed every six years, at an increasing price, thus giving an annual ^ip'etse 

 of §150. The Atlantic railroad, laid in the lumber portion of New york, had 

 'paid, in 1&62, •for fencing, |728 a mile. The bridges of the same cost 11826 a 

 mile, and stations and buildings 1760, and the cars cost about as much more. 

 The Wisconsin roads are not more cheaply built and maintained. "'^S|i4?at- 

 Bsp, S. 



