158 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE. 



gardens of fertility they have become little better than desert wastes, 

 has been clearly traced as to its cause — to the destruction of their for- 

 ests, at once their adornment and their defense. It has been hoped 

 that these discoveries, the result of scientific and painstaking obser- 

 vation mostly within, the present century, would save us from experi- 

 encing the sore evils which have befallen many other countries, by in- 

 ducing us to adopt such timely and effective measures as would lead to 

 the husbanding of our forest resources and the preservation of that 

 balance of natural conditions upon which our future national welfare 

 and comfort are so dependent. Whether this will be the happy effect 

 remains to be seen. In this new and rapidly-developing country the 

 legitimate — we may say the necessary — demands upon the forests for 

 fuel and for lumber of course are great. Our people are not accus- 

 tomed either to have the use of their property controlled by Govern- 

 mental regulations or restrictions as are the people of the Old World. 

 The interests which the people at large have in the forests, irrespective 

 of their ownership, is not generally — is not to any considerable extent — 

 understood. The owners of the forests for the most part look upon them 

 simply from the pecuniary point of view. The lumberman sees in the 

 trees only the source of so much money, and hastens to secure it. Lum- 

 ber brings so many dollars a thousand feet, and he hastens to convert 

 the monarchs of the wood into available merchandise. He cares noth- 

 ing, knows nothing, of meteorological effects. He will not learn that in 

 cutting down the forests which border the streams he is destroying 

 those streams, until he finds they will no longer float his logs to the 

 saw-mills, probably not even then. Nor does he care if only he can get 

 his lumber into market and convert it into money. If the market is 

 glutted this year so that sales are dull and prices low, he will hope that 

 his neighbors will lessen their cut for the next season, and so there will 

 be sufficient reason for him to continue his business unchecked. Mean- 

 time his neighbors hope and reason in the same way in regard to him- 

 self, and so all continue to cut to the greatest extent, and the glut in 

 the market is kept up. The producers are not benefited, but the trees 

 are destroyed and the future welfare of the country is threatened. 



DESTRUCTION UNRESTRICTED. 



Even in the face of this overproduction and the great areas already 

 stripped or nearly stripped of their forests, those who look at the mat- 

 ter without any pecuniary interest and call attention to the threatened 

 danger, are stigmatized not unfrequently as alarmists, and we are assured 

 that we need not concern ourselves about the lumber supply. We are also 

 told, notwithstanding the proofs established by the most careful and 

 protracted examination of the subject by most competent observers in 

 Europe, that the removal of the forests has nothing to do with the flow' 

 of streams or of droughts and floods, and so is of no importance in con- 

 nection with our commercial interests. At the same time it will be 

 found that the lumber manufacturers themselves are perfectly aware that 

 at the present rate of consumption the great forest regions of the country 

 will soon be exhausted. The lumber-trade publications, when addressing 

 themselves to the lumber producers and tradesmen in distinction from 

 the general public, frequently declare that the supply of growing timber 

 is becoming scanty, and urge that the cut of logs should be restricted on 

 this account as well as to bring about a better state of the market, and 

 conventions of lumbermen are held for the purpose of securing an 

 agreement among them to send smaller gangs of men into the woods in 



