16 FOREST PRESERVATION AND NATIONAL PROSPERITY. 



sumption of ties, for renewals only, by all the railroads of the United 

 States, is at least 100 million, to which add 20 million for additional 

 tracks and yards and for the construction of new railroads, and the 

 total is the equivalent in board measure of more than 4 billion feet. 

 The significance of these figures is more apparent when it is remem- 

 bered that about 200 ties is the average yield per acre of forest, vary- 

 ing very greatly in different localities; so that to supply this single 

 item necessitates the denudation annually of over one -half million 

 acres of forest. But the cross-tie supply is only one of the forest 

 products required by the railroads. There are bridge timbers, fence 

 posts, telegraph poles, car materials, and building timbers of all 

 kinds, all of which it is estimated will nearly equal in board measure 

 the cross-tie item, so that it is probable that the railroads of the 

 United States for all purposes require annually, under present prac- 

 tices, the entire product of almost one million acres of the forest. 



If the American railroads are to continue to be the efficient com- 

 mercial tool that they now are, to continue the very low average rates 

 and the high scale of wages now in effect, the question of the increased 

 cost of ties and timber is of greater and greater importance to those 

 who pay transportation charges, to wage-earners, and to railroad 

 owners. 



Hon. CHARLES F. MANDERSON, 

 General Solicitor Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railway Company. 



* * * The average cost of all ties now going into trackage of the 

 United States is 50 cents apiece, making an annual expenditure of 

 45 million dollars, or 450 million dollars every ten years. And this 

 calculation does not include the labor of placing the ties in the 

 track or the expense of local transportation. Nor does it take into 

 account the gradual but inevitable increase in price as the supply 

 lessens, the demand incident to the building of the new lines de- 

 manded by the ever-increasing commerce of the country, and the 

 necessary supply of street-car lines, both horse and electric, elevated 

 railways, subways, and mine tracks. The demands of these cor- 

 porations are enormous and constantly increasing. Add to these 

 requirements the many others caused by the uses heretofore referred 

 to, and some conception can be had of how capacious is the maw of 

 the great transportation lines of the Eepublic, upon whose successful 

 and steady maintenance all industries depend. 



* * * A future timber supply demands not only the preservation 

 by judicious forestry and intelligent lumbering of the store we have, 

 but the planting and husbanding of new trees wherever trees can be 

 induced to grow. To this end there must be the arousing of public 

 sentiment, so that in every State and in the Nation there shall be 

 taught the lesson that will lead to legislation. 



