18 FOREST PRESERVATION AND NATIONAL PROSPERITY. 



that the timber produced by the forests is the only benefit accruing 

 from them. Conservation of moisture by a thrifty growth of trees 

 is to the credit of the forest while alike important and necessary to 

 the mineral industry. 



. * * * Not many, perhaps, fully appreciate the enormous quantity of 

 timber needed in and about a great mine in order to carry on its 

 operations and protect the lives of its operatives. The hoisting 

 works, metallurgical and other buildings on the surface, which are 

 always in sight, perhaps make the average mind more or less oblivi- 

 ous to the fact that further supplies of the forest product are required 

 with every foot of progress made in penetrating the ground. As the 

 miner's work of taking out the ore advances he surrounds himself 

 with a framework of timber, which is intended to hold in place the 

 sides and roofs of his excavations. 



DAVID T. DAY, 



Chief of Division of Mining and Mineral Resources, U. S. Geological Snrvey. 



* * * We have no accurate knowledge of the amount of timber 

 used in a year in the mines, but we do know that it requires about 

 a cubic foot for each ton of anthracite, say 70 million cubic feet per 

 year; somewhat less for each ton of bituminous, say 250 million cubic 

 feet 3 T early. Iron ore needs at least 20 million feet, precious-metal 

 mining needs, say, 75 million cubic feet, or, say, 400 million cubic 

 feet a a year for the whole mining industry. 



Hon. CHARLES D. WALCOTT, 

 Director United States Geological Survey. 



* * * Abundance of wood is one of the prime necessities for suc- 

 cessful mining. There are four chief factors in the mining enter- 

 prise — the value of the ore, the cost of production, the cost of trans- 

 portation, and the cost of reduction; and the sum of the last three 

 must be less than the first or the mine will be closed. Mining, prop- 

 erly understood, is a business in which the profits or losses are the 

 result of the balance of these conditions, not an excavation of treasure 

 whose enormous value renders other considerations insignificant. 

 Now, in the three costs mentioned above, the principal elements are 

 water and wood. 



Maj. F. D. FENN, 

 Supervisor Forest Reserves in Idaho and Montana. 



* * * No other industry is more directly and intimately connected 

 with the administration of "forest reserves than mining. The preser- 

 vation of timber and the conservation of the water supply — the two 



a Equivalent to nearly 5 billion board feet. 



