3 86 



The National Geographic Magazine 



Wisconsin and Minnesota are helping 

 to cut the redwood on the Pacific coast, 

 and in each of the great timber regions 

 there is a mingling of lumbermen from 

 several of the others. The effect has 

 been to develop, by constant labor at 

 their trade under widely varying condi- 

 tions, a force of men who are unequaled 

 for enterprise and skill in their profes- 

 sion ; but the system has very largely 

 failed in what is of infinitely greater 

 importance to the permanent welfare of 

 the lumber industry — the upbuilding 

 throughout the country of a stable class 

 of workers in the woods, locally trained 

 and carrying on their work each in his 

 own community. The advantages of 

 such a condition lie in an equitable 

 geographical distribution of labor, in 

 the wholesome influence throughout the 

 country of a class whose means of live- 

 lihood is forest work, and in the fact 

 that all the operations of lumbering 

 may in this way be conducted more 

 cheaply than in any other. 



The effect upon the prices of lumber 

 which will result from the application 

 of forestry to the lumber industry will 

 be strongly marked.: ; The wide fluctua- 

 tion characteristic of lumber values to- 

 day is much more the result of condi- 

 tions within the industry itself than of 

 variations in the demand for the product 

 of the forest. The uncertainty of avail- 

 able supplies, the lack of true proportion 

 between stumpage values and lumber 

 values, the speculative features which 

 the industry now presents, have all 

 tended to produce an exceedingly un- 

 stable and abnormal fluctuation in the 



prices of lumber, with a marked dispo- 

 sition toward rapid increase. Under 

 forestry the speculative element can not 

 exist. The cost of producing timber, 

 plus a legitimate profit, will be the basis 

 upon which the value of it will be fixed. 

 The annual output of the country will 

 be no longer a matter of conjecture, and 

 a steady and normal range of prices for 

 lumber will be the inevitable result. 



The influence of forestry upon the 

 lumber industry is not a matter of con- 

 jecture. The details will have to work 

 themselves out, but the broad results of 

 conservative forest policy on the part of 

 private owners are plain. The lumber 

 industry in the United States is ap- 

 proaching a crisis. There is no more 

 doubt that conservative methods will be 

 applied to lumbering in this country 

 than there is of the development of ir- 

 rigation, of regulation of grazing, of the 

 application of improved methods in. 

 agriculture, or of any other modifica- 

 tion to which private as well as public 

 interests point the wa3 T . How long it 

 will be before the results of practical, 

 forestry make themselves generally felt 

 it is impossible to foretell ; but the fact 

 remains that there will be established 

 in this as in other countries in which, 

 conservative lumbering has followed 

 wasteful lumbering a legitimate and 

 permanent industry, characterized, as 

 has been stated, by conditions under 

 which speculation can not exist. Prices 

 will continue normal and stead} 7 , and 

 the quantity of timber produced will be 

 the main factor iu regulating consump- 

 tion. 



GEOGRAPHIC NOTES 



GUILLEMOT EGGS 



THROUGH the courtesy of Mr Jo- 

 seph Stanley-Brown, formerly 

 Secretary of the National Geographic 

 Society, the National Geographic 



Magazine is able to publish the remark- 

 able illustration of guillemot eggs shown 

 on page 3S7. The photograph was- 

 taken by Mr H. D. Chichester at the 

 boat landing on St Paul Island, Pribilof 

 group, and is a result of one of the an- 



