Morning journal and courier., 1883-10-22
SINGLE oOPIEs TaREE GENTS.
Monday, October as, 1888.
A NEEDED WARNING.

It has for some time been apparent that the people of this country are destroying their forests too rapidly. They keep on cut ting down trees as if there were no possibili- ty of failure in the supply. In fact, how ever, 1t will not be many years, at the prea- snt rate of depletion, before lumber will be scarcG and dear in this country. The real situation is strongly set forth In an English magazine by Mr. William Little of Montreal, who was actively engaged before Congress last winter during the discussion of the tariff on lumber.
 Mr. Little quotes from the census reports of the United States to prove that, at the present rate of destruction, the entire white pine of the Northwest will be exhausted within seven or eight years; and from re- port prepared by H. O. JoIy, late Premier of the Province of Quebec, for the Dominion Council of Agriculture, in which it Is shown that the supposed enormous pine territory of Canada is really confined to comparatively small area, and Shat the best lumber Is year. ly becoming less accessible to the markets. He continues: It has often been said that there would be found substitute for wood; if so, 1t is quite time the discovsrer brought it forward, for up to the present the everlasting Yankee" has not even touched the subject. Notwithstanding the fences of wire, the use of iron in building, the terra ootta and straw lumber, the con- sumption of our old frieRd wooden lumber increased nearly 50 per cent. in the ten years from 1870 to 1880, the former being 12, ,755, ,543, ,000 and the latter IS e9I, ,356, GOO feet. ** And yet we are informed that we are within seven years of tha time when the supplies of white pine and spruce lumber must cease. The value of the lumber now produced in the North ex- ceeds $500, ,o00, ,ooo year as 1t falls from the saw, and to replscs it would cost from two to three times this sum, even if the same lum- ber could be obtained elsewhere, which 1t cannot be, and $60O.0O0. 900 year would not replace 1t; so that in very short time this section of the country, instead of hay ing great and profitable industry advancing and helping every interest, will be called up- on to pay out hundreds of millions of dol- lars annually for such material
 He estimates $1, ,000, COG, 900 as the present annual value of the forest products of the Uni ted States at primary points of production or manufacture. When 1t is seen that the manufacture now stands at the head of the manufactures of the United States in value, and that the white pine, which has been in the past and is still the most important fact or in this great industry is rapidly approach ing extinction, Ar. Little feels thaat he can not be far astray in considering this, as regards America, the most important econ- omic question of the day. The confusion in names has led many people to suppose that the yellow or pitch pine of the South will make an excelient substitute for the white variety of the North. This he says can never be, for the woods are most dissimilar. The southern pine, although excellent for many purposes, is hard and resinous, about the same weight ss white oak, or nearly double that of pine or spruce. and hence not go cas- ily brought to the mills as the lighter vsrie- ties of timber, which are taken with but little difficulty from the most remote sections, wherever water courses exist.
 It is difficult to see hoE tho destruction of our foreats Is to be stayed in time to do much good. for there is not enough interest in She matter. Mr. Little comments the policy of the Province of Quebec in restricting the cut ting of pine trees to those which measure more than twelve inches through at She butt, and in charging the same tiAber dues upon the small logs as on the larger onss which has had the effect of ourt&ilinG the cutting of the small pine and spruce trees In that prov ince