FOREST PRESERVATION AND NATIONAL PROSPERITY. 13 



affected years ago are now often flooded with water 8 to 15 feet 

 deep. All this shows the importance of forests to agriculture, and 

 appeals to the American people to spare the trees, and will in time — 

 not far off — compel the State legislatures, as well as the Federal 

 Government, to take action in the premises. 



Hon. JOHN F. LACEY, 



Representative in Congress from Iowa. 



I was born in the woods of Virginia. I moved to the prairies, and 

 one of the most unpleasant things of my subsequent life was to return 

 to the woods of Virginia and find that the old streams and the holes 

 we used to swim in and where we used to go fishing are now gravelly 

 roads. They are highways as dry, as arid, as one of the deserts of 

 Arizona or New Mexico. Why is it? Because the trees have been 

 cut down and the springs, the children of the forest, dried up. In- 

 stead of a slow-running brook digging out holes here and there clear 

 as crystal, we have simply a torrent carrying the pebbles and sand 

 from the hills, and then a desert. 



DEMAND FOR BETTER LUMBER, TRADE STATISTICS. 



GEOEGE K. SMITH, 



Secretary National Lumber Manufacturers' Association. 



Large figures are needed to describe the lumber-manufacturing 

 plants, the amount produced annually, and the amount of standing 

 timber. Thirty-three thousand and thirty-five establishments were 

 in operation in 1900, and produced 35,084,160,000 feet board measure 

 in that year. Ten kinds of timber, counting all hardwoods as one, 

 show a total of 1,240,000,000,000 feet available for lumbering. 



These figures are interesting and important, but nowhere do we 

 find the amount of lumber consumed annually and the amount on 

 hand at the beginning of each year. Or, in other words, what 

 proportion of the thirty-five billions was used during the calendar 

 year and what per cent remained on hand. Attempts are made by 

 the twelve Lumber manufacturers' associations composing the " Na- 

 tional Lumber Manufacturers' Association " to procure these figures, 

 but of the thirty-five billions shown to be produced, less than one-half 

 is accounted for by these twelve associations. 



The need for and the importance of exact information as to the 

 total amount of lumber in the hands of the manufacturers at the 

 beginning of each year will eventually draw all lumber producers 

 together, and, instead of depending almost entirely on a census report 

 published once in five years, they will have figures of their own 

 annually on which to base their calculations. Already steps have 

 been taken to secure the names of the 33,000 manufacturers of lumber. 



