28 
WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY 
at a great cost for transportion, or on wood of our own 
growth. 
Fuel with us can never be cheap except wood be supplied 
at a low price. 
Houses cannot be built by the poorer class of people unless 
timber and lumber of every needed sort can be had cheap. 
Dwellings and shops cannot be built for rent by the poorer 
classes at prices they can afford to pay unless the material can 
be had at low prices. 
The cheapness of forest products will also determine : 
The number, commodiousness and elegance of all public 
buildings, including school houses and churches; 
The expense of constructing railways, docks, warehouses, 
mills; and hence, 
The cost of transportion, travel and manufacture ; 
The profits on whatever the farmer produces for the market; 
The cost of all goods and articles purchased by the whole 
people; and even 
The tendency of the people to that freedom of intercommu¬ 
nication so essential to community of knowledge and homo- 
genity of sentiment. 
This question of forests, therefore, is one that touches, in 
the most vital manner, everv economical and social interest of 
our people. 
If to all other considerations we add the aesthetic and moral 
reasons which are found in the surpassing beauty of a land¬ 
scape bedotted with groves of sturdy oaks, of graceful elms, 
or of stately and solemn pines, and in the nestling places they 
afford for rural homes,—most delightful and hallowed of all 
human abodes,—there would seem to be every conceivable 
motive on the part of both people and government for guard¬ 
ing this great common interest with an intelligent and jealous- 
care. 
The deplorable fact is, however, that, while our forests are 
being swept from the state as with the besom of destruction, 
almost nothing has been done either to prescribe conditions 
