THE LUMBER TRADE OF GREEN BAY. 
401 
TIIF LUMBER TRADE OF GREEN BAY. 
BY IION. CIIAS. D, ROBINSON, OF GREEN BAY. 
Prof. J. W. Hoyt, 
Sec . Wis. State Agr , Society: 
My Dear Sir: —In the midst of pressing duties, I have re¬ 
sponded to jour request for an article on the Lumber Business. 
It is hastily written, without any attempt to give statistics, 
except such as my memory furnished—but the many demands 
on my time have prevented the preparation of anything more 
elaborate. 
When the farmer, on the broad and rich prairies of Wiscon¬ 
sin, makes ready to set up his homestead and encompass round 
about his fertile acres, he mourns over the want of those ma¬ 
jestic forests which shall furnish him the wherewith to do it. 
When the farmer, deep in the recesses of the Wisconsin pine¬ 
ries, wrestles with the trees and struggles for years among the 
stumps and roots, in carving out his farm, he thinks, often with 
a sigh, of the open lands southward, where Nature has made 
the ground ready for the ploughshare. But the owner of the 
prairie finds that the crops which come to him, at once, will 
buy, of themselves, the lumber needed to protect them; and 
the owner of the woodland finds that while he is slowly hewing 
his way through the woods, the trees themselves will buy the 
corn and the wheat needed to feed him until his own ground 
bears fruits. These are some of the elements" of Wisconsin 
wealth. Her topographical features, whether fair or rugged, 
form a system of balances and compensation. The northern 
farmer is ex-officio a lumberman; the southern farmer, living in 
the “fat of the land,” has more than he needs; and commerce 
thrives in bearing to and fro the fruits of the reaper and the 
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