16 
Earnest efforts are being made all over the world to try 
and check the present wilful waste of natural resources. • 
During the past fifty years, the consumption and destruc- 
tion of the natural products of mother earth has been greater 
than during all the centuries preceding. An aspect of our 
development and civilization which is fast becoming not only 
serious, but alarming, when we consider the well-being of the 
generations to follow us. During the year 1909, the consump- 
tion of coal in North America amounted to about 450 million 
tons. The consumption of petroleum, nearly 200 million bar- 
rels. The consumption of timber, including destruction, over 
100 billion feet. 
It is now a well known fact that the world’s supply of 
timber is becoming far too inadequate to meet the present day 
demands upon it, and that a timber famine is near at hand. 
British Columbia has a very valuable inheritance in her 
forest wealth, and it behooves us to take more thought for the 
morrow, and exercise more care and foresight in the manage- 
ment of her timber domain than has been in evidence in the 
past. 
In this connection, it is interesting to glance over the 
history of past legislation upon the timber question in this 
Province. 
The “Land Act” has been altered from time to time, 
giving more and more freedom to the timber speculator, until 
the last stampede, when the situation became so objectionable, 
that the Government very wisely decided to withdraw all the 
remaining timber land from the market. 
The wide-open license system, whereby anyone could with, 
a small expenditure, secure the tenure to a large area of virgin 
forest, fanned the speculative fervor, and brought an abun- 
dance of cash into the Provincial treasury. 
The method may Simply be described in a word, “frenzied 
finance,” or discounting our timber assets at the speculator’s 
bank, by a small payment down with future delivery. In the 
end, the poor consumer must pay the piper. 
