The Mason County journal. [volume] (Shelton, W.T.) 1886-1927, 1898-11-11

one thing to be done with it, and that
was to let it alone until it had burned
itself out. "We employ hundreds of
men," said Mr.. Simpson, "but we have
never attempted to fight a big forest
fire. 1t would be of no avaid. OF
course, our men have suppressed and
extlnguished numbers of such fires at
their inception, but when the flames
have once reached their full swing
among the big timber and the wind
is blowing, hundreds of fire depart
ments could not check them"
These gentlemen, with Others to
whom a Post-Intelligencer reporter
talked, agree in believing that it will
be many years before the disastrous
summer confagrations in the heavv
and valuable belts of Washington tim
ber can be prevented, if, indeed, such
happy consummation can ever be
reached.
Everybody agrees that the timber
resources of the state are immeasura-
bly, valuable. Everybody agrees that
the forest fires are immeasurably dis
astrous
"No adequate expression of the total
value of our timber in this state has
ever teen reached" said one lumber
man yesterday, "and no arithmetician
has yet figured out the enormous dam
age which the state has sustained
from these forest fires"
Every summer practically the same
story is told. Seattle gets its first no.
tice usually in the bulletins which
float above and through her streets in
dense dun clouds, which sometimes,
as for instance, three years ago, render
it impossible to see from one side of
the street to the other.
Everybody deplores the existence of
these fires. They bring harm to many
interests and good to none. Every
body says year by year that some
method should be devised to prevent
the origin of such fires, or to quench
the first blazing fagots before the con-
fagration has widened its destructive
path and gathered its irresistible mo-
mentum. But no one has yet suggest
ed an adequate or feasible remedy. "It
might pay the lumbermen to establish
a system of guards" said one lumber
man yesterday, "but doubt whether
guards could be provided numerous or
Wig liant enough to do away with the
evil Besides, since the government
has established its timber reserves any
such system of espionage would seem
to devolve naturally upon the United
States authorities. The only reason
we have not had so many or such
heavy forest fires this summer is on
account of the weather"
Meanwhile the inroads made by
forest fires upon the great belts of
Washington timber are to some ex-
tent. if not wholly, offset by the ap-
preciating relative value OF these tim
Der belts as source Of supply to the
world AS already indicated the tim
Der resources of the Middle West are
being rapidly depleted. This is par
ticularly the case with reference to
large timber, the supply OF which is
now practically extinct in Michigan,
Minnesota and Wisconsin. With a
lower railroad rate the shipments Of
Washington lumber would advance
incalculably, and 1umbermen believe
that this lower rate is but question
of very short time.
But the Eastern market is not the
only one open TO the Washington
forests. It's coastwise trade has grown
to enormous proportions, as shown by
statistics published in the Post-Intel-
ligencer. San Francisco is taking q
very large quantity of Puget Sound
lumber, and the fact that it commands
the market is shown in the recent adj
vance in price among the lumber yards
of that city
The foreign market, too, is opening
as another pressage of the great COM
merce that is to enrich the bosom OF
the Pacific. The big mills at Blakely
bear ample witness to this fact. They
have done larger foreign business
this year than ever before, and have
opened up several distinctly new fields,
particularly in the Orient, where their
shipments to China, Japan and Siberia
are helping to bind the two coasts of
the Pacific into that closer commercial
unity which the foremost internation-
al economists of the day now predict
with con6deDce.-P.-I.