374 ECONOMICS OF FORESTRY. 



in forest decimation, might be reckoned ; it came 

 as gradually or as fast as railway systems de- 

 veloped, and made accessible the vast fields of 

 supply in the northwestern Lake states just as the 

 supplies of the Eastern states began to weaken.^ 



By 1882 the Saginaw Valley had reached the 

 climax of its production, and the lumber industry 

 of the great Northwest, with a cut of eight billion 

 feet of white pine alone, was in full blast. South- 

 ern development "began- much later to assume large 

 proportions, but by the present time the lumber 

 product of the Southern states has grown to pro- 

 portions equal, if not superior, to those of the 

 Northern states. 



'" No wonder that those observing this rapid deci- 



/ mation of our forest supplies and the incredible 



wastefulness and additional destruction by fire, with 



1 no attention to the aftergrowth, began again to 



sound the note of alarm. Besides the writings in 



\ the daily press and other non-official pubUcations, 



we find the reports of the United States Depart- 



; ment of Agriculture more and more frequently 



/ calling attention to the subject.^ 



In the report issued by the Patent Office as early 

 as 1849, we find the following significant language 

 in a discussion on the influence of forests on water- 

 flow and their rapid destruction : — 



"The waste of valuable timber in the United 



1 See " American Lumber," by B. E. Fernow, in " One Hun- 

 dred Years of American Commerce," D. O. Haynes & Co., 1895. 



