Our Nation is still a prodigal. She taps the fuel supply of future generations and allows the gas to burn and the oil to run to waste. More of the timber of the Nation has been burned for clearing and pasture than has been sawed by the mills; but when the lumbermen are accused of destroying their property, or not utilizing all that will return cost for their labor, they are accused of lack of good intelligence—and that we resent. New England and New York have a greater area in timber than they had 50 years ago. Nearly every town site has a saw mill that supplies local demand and makes shipments to nearby cities. The few days I spent in New Hampshire last spring, and the auto trips I took through the places I knew in my youth, impressed these facts with force. Rail trips through Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland revealed the fact that thousands of acres once under cultivation are now in timber, and that old forest lands are reproducing. Pine groves, cut when I was a boy, are being harvested, and fields where I picked rocks every spring are growing beautiful pine forests; the present owner of the old homestead in New Hampshire has put in a little saw and shingle mill to cut trees that were not sprouted when I left the old farm. The small saw-mills that are supplying the local demand are cutting the largest of the new growth, and the supply of that portion of the States where the timber was once exhausted will hereafter be adequate to local demands. As it is in New England and the Middle States, so it is in the South, in the West, in California and Oregon and Washington; if we keep out the fires in the old choppings, the new growth will be ready before the old is gone—and the waste of today kept always damp by the young growth, brush, ferns, and vines, will rival in value the portion of the tree we are now able to market.
Again consumption in all things is in proportion to price. Advance the price of lumber, and you reduce the consumption. Stone, brick, concrete, and steel are ready substitutes, as the price of lumber advances. In Europe, lumber is no longer a necessity, only a luxury, and not one much cared for at that; this has been forced home to me in countries I have visited during the past six months. Six days from New York we touch the Azores, a land where no lumber is used except for floor-joists and rafters in the cheaper buildings; next we touched Madeira, and found a city of stone. So with Gibraltar, southern Spain, Egypt, Syria, Greece, Italy, France; not a lumber yard in all these countries that we could find. A cargo a year would supply the demand for all purposes. The wonder was not how these people get along without lumber, but how they use the 60 feet per annum they are reported to require. I do not think there is one shingle roof in all those countries, and I expect a very good knowledge of Arabic would be needed to explain to those people what a shingle is and its use. In Constantinople we found a few miserable board shacks. Lumber comes to that market at a low price from the Black Sea, and it appears to be a detriment rather than a good. In Switzerland and southern Germany, some houses are built of wood above the lower story; but I think there are no shingle roofs. These countries are well timbered, with trees in rows showing they are planted. The price of common lumber is only a little higher than with us, but labor is cheap, and growing timber exempt from taxes. Trees there can find a profitable market, trunks, limbs, stump, and roots. It is then, little wonder mountain sides, impossible for agriculture, should be planted to timber. Those timber areas do not use much of their lumber. In Switzerland and Germany we found saw mills, some of them of fair capacity, and shipping by rail, but their towns were built of stone. The mills select the largest trees, and replace with new plants. In time we shall reach some of these same conditions, and plant our timber instead of allowing it to grow at will. All this will come about when proper laws are enacted.
American people will some time awaken to the fact, long since known in Europe, that timber is no necessity; only a makeshift. Bridges of rock, houses of brick and stone and steel, with roofs of tile, are for the centuries; buildings of wood are only for the years and the flames. Lumber is cheap in the new countries, and convenient for quick shelter; and it is there forests are found. Big timbers may become scarce, but their demand is also decreasing. Already our cities have fire limits. Bridges and spars are of steel; and if our farmers could obtain money at city rates, it is doubtful if it would not be cheaper for them to build fire-proof houses than to pay higher insurance on wooden buildings. Already roofs of shingles are in balance with roofs of other and safer material, and the price of shingles is fixed by this competition. As it is with shingles it will be with lumber, and is for many purposes; in many countries for nearly all purposes.
Do not think I underestimate the value of our timber, or fail to advocate its protection and reproduction; but he who says we are approaching the time when timber values are to be much greater than now, and he who predicts a timber famine, have both overlooked facts that will come to the front with the years. The cry of "Fire!" never stopped a conflagration. The cry of Conservation will never stop the waste of valueless commodities. Action is needed in both instances, if results are to be attained. To conserve our timber we must give it value. Let the Government refuse to sell from its reserves except for cost of reproduction; also protect us from foreign competition. Educate our loggers to the enormity of the crime of burning choppings fit only for the timber crop. Let States impose rigid fire laws and make liberal appropriation for forest protection. Let our legislators see the folly and injustice of taxing the same crop year after year; a crop that can contribute nothing toward paying those taxes until marketed, a crop that is of far less value per acre than the yield of fruit gathered each year. Do not be afraid the few remaining timber owners are going to be benefited at the expense of the many; rather the benefit will be for our children and our children's children. Above all, remember the timber owner is not to blame, only fortunate that he bought timber that our Government was willing to part with for a song; and hold our laws and their makers responsible for results for which they, only, are to blame.
The forest fires of the West today are more often set by the railroads than by all others. Their locomotives are torches of demons, tearing through our forests, streaming fire from their stacks and leaving all behind in flames. From the rear platforms of trains I have seen hundreds of little fires spring up as we passed—this, when the woods were dry and conditions right. The timber they burn is their resources for freight. The destruction they create is a loss of millions to their own business. It would seem prosecution for damage done should follow their wanton torches, and that laws should be made for the protection of their own interests they so recklessly ignore. It is no longer the logger or the settler that causes our forest fires. Our laws and public opinion, and vast sums expended by timber owners prevent the setting of careless fires; but the railroad locomotives still scatter fire along their pathway through the woods. Let the railroads learn a lesson from the recent Montana fires that stretched along their lines on either side and crossed the rivers where they cross—fires that have destroyed millions of young pines that a few years hence would have yielded a freight of from $10 to $30 each tree for their transportation to market.
Let the loggers awaken to the fatal folly of allowing the first fire in their cuttings, and our legislators to the necessity of forest protection. Stop the first fire where land is only adopted to the timber crop.
Out in the West where our mountains are the highest; where our streams spring from the eternal glaciers and are fullest when the weather is warmest; where water falls the farthest; where our soils are most productive when moistened; where our fruit is the finest; where trees grow the largest; where our hills contain coal, iron, silver, copper, and gold; where our ocean is the greatest and our fisheries are most prolific, our people are all Conservationists. They are for Conservation that is practical and adapted to their peculiar conditions; Conservation that shall develop and utilize their resources, and that shall yield the greatest good to the greatest number, and to the future as well as the present.
Where all things are on so grand a scale, the people cannot be small and narrow. They are as are their woods, their mountains, and their torrents, grand and active; and they are to be trusted. They will solve the problem of conserving their timber. They will keep out fires. They will enact just tax laws. They will guard their holdings. They will encourage new growth. They will be first to awaken to the best methods of forest Conservation adapted to their needs. They will solve the problem of conserving our western forests.
FORESTS AND STREAM-FLOW
William S. Harvey
Philadelphia