began to reach the pure spruce timber which protected the 

 upper slopes. 



A rapidly developing pulp industry for the manufac- 

 ture of newsprint paper opened a market for material too 

 small for the lumber manufacturer. Moreover, when the 

 scene of operations was the thin-soiled upper slopes covered 

 with conifers it did not pay to leave anything behind which 

 had a sale value, for whatever remained was likely to be 

 blown down by the wind. The debris in the wake of the logger 

 became a fire-trap of the most formidable character. Pro- 

 tection against fire was not worth its cost to the private owner, 

 whose interest was limited to getting all that he could from the 

 existing stand. Left to itself, therefore, natural economic 

 development could have but one result — the sweeping out 

 of existence of the timber resource and the final desolation of 

 the entire region above the hardwoods. 



It was the growing perception of this fact that brought the 

 awakening of the public to a sense of what it had at stake. 

 But how to apply a remedy was a difficult question. The 

 State commission appointed in 1881 made its report in 1885, 

 but proposed no constructive program beyond a plan for the 

 inauguration of a system of fire protection of a primitive and 

 inadequate character. A second commission, appointed in 

 1889, reported in 1891 that the cost of State forest ownership 

 on an extensive scale was too great to make this course prac- 

 ticable. It did, however, recommend purchases by the State 

 of ''carefully selected sections of the mountain region, of 

 small extent, to be held perpetually and so cared for and pro- 

 tected that their natural wild attractiveness shall be per- 

 manently maintained." 



An outcome of the report of this commission was the 

 creation, in 1893, of a permanent State Forest Commission. 

 Partly through purchase and partly through gift, the State 

 has come into possession of a number of small tracts contain- 

 ing in all about 9,000 acres. But by the beginning of the 

 present century the logic of the situation was beginning to 

 make clear that if the large problem was to be solved it must 



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