FORESTRY MOVEMENT IN UNITED STATES. 371 



in amount, and supposed to be a continued neces- 

 sity for building war ships.^ 



We can now smile at the concern expressed so 

 early by writers in public prints, with regard to 

 the threatened exhaustion of forest supplies. But 

 it must be understood that the extent of our forest 

 domain was then entirely unknown, the population 

 was confined mainly to the Eastern coast country, 

 and in the absence of railroad communication, only 

 the supplies adjacent to rivers and sea were avail- 

 able, and, just as in Europe, the fuel question was 

 uppermost, as long as coal had not yet been de- 

 veloped ; hence location of supplies close to centres 

 of civilization was of more moment. 



With the rapid development of the country, and 

 the opening up of means of transportation, such 

 as the Erie Canal, the apprehensions regarding 

 supplies seem to have vanished. During the 

 active period of expansion, from 1820 to i860, 

 when the population more than quadrupled, over 

 one and a half million farms were established, 

 mainly hewn from the forest, the timber in the 

 absence of a ready market being largely burned 

 in the log pile ; and with the necessity of constantly 

 having to subdue tree growth, not only a feeling 

 of inexhaustible resources and hence of careless- 

 ness, but almost a real pleasure in destruction 



1 Laws to punish malicious and wilful incendiarism and some- 

 times also careless firing of the woods were about this period en- 

 acted in almost every state. 



