“Individual avarice and corporate greed will soon cause all the mineral lands to be stripped of their forests.... Wealthy companies have been organized, mills erected, and the most valuable timber accessible is being rapidly cut off. That which is every one’s property is no one’s care, and extravagance and waste are the natural consequence of negligent legislation.”[21]
The increasing destruction of the timber belts of this country is certainly enough to alarm the nation. The Census Office prepared for distribution a bulletin bearing upon this subject for the consideration of the people of the United States. The lumber production—which means tree destruction—in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan in the last decade increased twenty-nine per cent in quantity and seventy-five per cent in value, and according to the eleventh (last) census, the capital invested in the milling business in the three states named shows an increase of one hundred and fifty-seven million five hundred and thirty-one thousand dollars.
United States Senator Henry M. Rice, who spent considerable time in Northern Minnesota treating with the Indians, says: “This timber cutting is going on for fifty miles up the Baudette, North and South Fork rivers, and that the Indians declare that it has been going on for more than a dozen years by Canadian lumbermen.” It is stated on good authority that more than two hundred million feet were floated through the Lake of the Woods in 1894. And Senator Rice says: “So bold have these timber robbers become that they have built dams in the tributary streams for the purpose of backing up the water and floating out their logs.”
When these extensive thieving operations were conveyed to the authorities, one lone “timber inspector” was sent up in this vast district and made his headquarters in the wilderness one hundred and fifty miles from the nearest point from which he could obtain any assistance, and it is generally believed, in Minnesota, that the “timber inspector” failed to “hold up” several thousand Canadian robbers, who were engaged in floating American timber across the line and filling their pockets with gold.
The Minneapolis Journal has done much to call the attention of the people of that state, and the Nation, to the unparalleled destruction of this greatest gift of nature, and quite recently says:
“The reservations which have been ceded by the Chippewas in this state to the government embrace the heaviest white pine forests now available as a source of lumber supply. These forests are largely contributory to the retention of the moisture which feeds the streams and lakes that make the sources of the Mississippi river.
“Already there is much said about the great commercial value of these pine lands, and there is not the slightest doubt that as soon as the region is opened by the government the work of destruction will commence, which will speedily lay bare the soil and subject it to the drying influences of the sun and wind, or to the forest fires, which will kill every young growth which appears, and destroy even tree seed, which has been borne there by the winds. The result of this will be the diminution of the sources of the supply of the Mississippi, which will be felt by every water power company from Itasca to Fort Snelling.
“These are grave consequences, and the question is: Shall the denudation of this new region be allowed to go on without some regulations as to cutting and forest renewal? There would seem to be a good opportunity to bring to bear the world’s experience in forestry. This reckless cutting and selling the forests will bring temporary gain to the lumbermen, but will ultimately destroy agriculture and water-power interests as well as the healthful conditions of the country.
“In France, whole communities were ruined by the denudation of their lands; and obliged the government to enter upon the work of restocking this ruined section of country with young trees at a cost of many millions of dollars; all to regain what had been lost through indifference. But how is it now? The region of the Landes, which fifty years ago was the abandoned country of little value, inhabited by a few sickly shepherds, who wandered over the country with their meager flocks, is now the most prosperous part of France. It has been made so by the planting of forests, and has now saw-mills, charcoal kilns, turpentine works, thriving towns, and fertile agricultural lands, and a growing and increasing valuation, and the net gain to the government by the expenditure amounts to over two hundred million dollars.
“Not until the sheltering influence of trees has disappeared, the climate made variable with sharp and sudden changes of temperature, successions of thaws and freezings; not until springs and brooks become dry in summer, and a failure of all kinds of crops and plants, does the improvident ask or even wonder what the matter is.
“Every reserve of timber in this country ought to be sacredly guarded by the government, and timber cutting be put under stringent regulations, looking to the continued protection of the streams. Unless this is done the Mississippi river will surely change its character. It will become a shallow, sluggish stream, unable to carry off impurities, and useless for navigation or water-power. It will not take very long to effect this change, if the forests are destroyed in the northern part of its source. A present gain in lumber will mean very great injury to all other material interests.”[22]
A special from St. Paul says—“From Rainy Lake to the Lake of the Woods, a distance of one hundred and fifty miles, the entire country is covered with a heavy growth of timber and is mostly pine, and is totally uninhabited save by scattering bands of Chippewa Indians. That these two great lakes are connected by Rainy Lake river, one of the finest navigable streams in North America; and on which its branches and the Lake of the Woods, no less than twenty steamers and tugs ply from early spring to late in the fall, conveying stolen timber from the United States to Rat Portage, Keewatin, and even to Winnipeg, where it is manufactured and sent wherever a market can be found.
“Keewatin and Rat Portage are the centers of the timber depredations and act as a base of supplies for the depredators. Nearly all the numerous fleets of steamers plying on the lake find their home in these two towns. The Dominion Government considers its side of the line important enough to demand a station at Hungry Hall, on the Canadian side of the mouth of Rainy Lake river, as well as at several other points between the Red river of the North and the head of Lake Superior, but the United States Government, though knowing the amount of valuable timber in the district desirable, has no port between St. Vincent and Lake Superior.