Just look at this: every twelvemonth we cut up 
enough trees to make a board-walk, 10 feet wide and 
73 feet long for every man and woman, boy and girl, 
in the country. In other words, the ‘cut’ taken 
from our forests every winter would supply all per¬ 
sons, big and little, from Halifax to Victoria, with 
two cords of wood each. Imagine every man, wo¬ 
man and child in your district standing beside their 
two cords and then widen the picture to include all 
the thousands of communities in Canada. It looks 
like a lot of wood, doesn’t it? 
Tracing an Electric Wire. 
Any Boy Scout knows that fence posts are wood 
and newspapers are just the pulp of wood. But 
here is a different story: Electricity for most of our 
homes and factories is also 1 only a question of living 
forests and nearly all the power that runs Canadian 
street cars comes indirectly from the great dense 
masses of tree life on what we call the “watersheds. 
Our larger cities and towns are lighted by electricity 
developed from water powers in rivers. A big 
majority of the mills that employ armies of workers 
would come to a sudden stop if the flow in certain 
streams lost volume or evenness. Old Captain 
Water-Power is a splendid friend when treated 
right, but he can prove likewise a tricky enemy. 
When we say that your electric wire runs back 
to a forest it is not a trick of mixing words or sense. 
The truth is the same as when we say: “A rifle ball 
is propelled by expanding gases” or “The roseTakes 
its color from the sun.” Nature’s book of unchange¬ 
able laws is pretty safe to go by. 
Canada, as you know, contains little or no anthra¬ 
cite coal, and to run factories by steam-power coal 
is necessary. Providence balanced that lack with a 
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