40 
FORESTS OF WISCONSIN . 
plants and machinery, 11 millions to logging equipments, log¬ 
ging railways, etc., including also logs on hand at the time, and 
over 31 millions to timberland, tributary and belonging to the 
saw-mills. These same establishments paid during that year 
nearly $700,000 taxes, a sum equal to the total state taxes of 
Wisconsin; they paid over $3,000,000 for running expenses 
aside from wages; about 15 million dollars for wages and log¬ 
ging contracts and over $700,000 for the keep of animals alone. 
The lumbering industry gave employment in a regular way 
to over 55,000 men (not women and children), besides purchas¬ 
ing several million dollars worth of logs. Of those persons em¬ 
ployed in these operations a large per cent, are settlers who 
through this industry alone are enabled to support themselves 
until their slowly growing clearings furnish sufficient harvest. 
It is the taxes on timber land (not waste land, however,) and its 
industries which furnish the “road money’ 7 and it is this same 
fund which builds, equips, and largely maintains in the thinly 
settled backwoods of Wisconsin, schools equal if not better than 
those of the country districts of any other state. It is this same 
industry which for years has made farming in the backwoods 
more profitable, and the farmers more prosperous than those of 
some other states with milder climates and equally fertile soil. 
Nor is it the pine alone which has done and is doing so much 
for this country. For owing to an unnecessary and injurious 
competition in the exploitation of the pineries there has result¬ 
ed a concentration of milling and logging operations which in 
many cases deprived the particular counties in which the pine 
supplies were located, of much of the benefit which otherwise 
would have accrued to them from this resource. It is therefore 
to be expected that to counties like Langlade, Shawano, Forest, 
Lincoln, Taylor, and others, the standing hemlock and hardwoods 
promise to be of greater value than was their former stand of 
pine. 
Forest , Climate , and Water flow. 
It is conceded by all that the forest exerts a beneficial influ¬ 
ence in tempering the rigors of a cold continental climate with 
