New York City would have been impossible. He 
meant that unless a way of preserving food supplies 
cheaply had been discovered, it would be physically 
impossible to feed the four million human beings in 
New York three times a day with fresh food de¬ 
livered direct from the farms. 
Some Ways We Use Wood. 
It is even truer that our modern Canada would 
have been impossible had not the country been in 
possession of enormous forests of splendid quality 
close at hand for any pioneer to help himself. We 
simply had to have wood in this country and could 
not have lived comfortably one day without it. Our 
railways were built with millions of ties and thous¬ 
ands of wooden cars and coaches. Mining could 
never have commenced and would not continue 
to-day if wooden mine props were not continually 
supplied by the train load. The props used in Nova 
Scotia mines every year, if placed end to end, would 
stretch from Halifax to the Coast of Ireland. Our 
fisheries require wood for vessels, barrels, boxes and 
in other ways. Our farmers demand it for building 
material and fuel and fence posts. No newspaper 
in all Canada could issue without thousands of 
spruce trees to feed the hungry paper mills. Our 
homes are mostly built of wood, furnished with 
wooden articles, and kept snug in cold weather with 
wooden fuel. Maybe you drove last week in a 
wooden vehicle over wooden bridges and delivered a 
load at a wooden flour mill or cheese factory, sixty 
or seventy years old and of staunch old oak or pine 
timbers from cellar to roof. 
Of course, we hear some talk, now and then, 
about wood substitutes but actually the use of wood 
in Canada is increasing from year to year. 
5 
