The Canadian competitors, who had an advantage of an 

 average of more than double the present duty, coming into 

 a continually over-stocked market, made low prices for com- 

 mon grades. Our lumbermen had high local taxes on stand- 

 ing timber, logs, lumber mills, and all other property. These 

 added to heavy interest bills on large investments and depre- 

 ciation of plants, have been the motive power that has 

 pushed the cutting of the timber as rapidly as possible, and 

 wasted the lumber in the woods, mills and burners. 



These conditions have prevailed, to a large extent, from 

 the earliest times through the territory of our white pine 

 forests to within the past ten or fifteen years. They do 

 now and will prevail in the future in the remaining quite 

 extensive southern fields, and the great and principal sup- 

 ply of the Pacific or Western States. In the old white pine 

 States the problems of conservation are of little concern. 

 The small stock of timber remaining and the reduced 

 amount of the white pine in the eastern Canadian provinces, 

 render it of much less concern as to the remainder of our 

 white pine forests. On the Pacific Coast the conditions are 

 as much subject to waste as those formerly prevailing in the 

 old pine regions ; and in some respects more waste has been 

 carried on, especially in the great forest of California. 



We are now confronted with the conditions and prob- 

 lems transmitted to the remaining timber supply and which 

 have led to the consumption and the wasting of so much 

 of our forests that there is now left only a minor fraction of 

 the original timber supply. The temporary advanced prices 

 of lumber in the central and eastern part of the country, 

 excepting as to the past year when prices have been lower, 

 has not, to any extent, reduced the per capita use of lumber, 

 or the general consumption which has prevailed in earlier 

 years. In fact, for the past several years, the per capita 

 consumption has been increasing because of the disappear- 

 ance of the hardwood which formerly supplemented largely 



