Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1901-11-29
Another Business Proposition.

A large number of small spruces and
frs, at least 10000 to $4,000, cut in
Marlboro, have been drawn to the rail
road station at Brattleboro this week
for shipment to Philadelphia for the
Christmas tree trade. The Philadel-
phia dealer who makes the shipment
pays a stated sum for the trees on the
stump and hires them cut and drawn.
The trees are sawn off close to the
ground, and tied in bundles closely
bound with stout twine. A car piled
high will probably carry 1000 to $500
trees. The men employed in the work
say that the farmers get "a dollar
load" which means a dollar for about
200 trees, half a cent apiece, five dol
lars for a thousand. On a liberal es-
innate of the cost of cutting, drawing,
shipping by rail, and storage and
handling in Philadelphia, or any other
city, it is apparent that the cost per
tree to the dealers can hardly exceed
Is or 20 cents a tree. The Philadel-
phia dealer said in conversation that
he SHOULD not consider himself a
salesman" if he could not get five
dollars apiece for the larger trees. A
fair margin of profit surely between
grower and consumer!
The work of cutting these young
trees for the city Christmas trade has
been going on in other parts of the
state for several years. What this
trade means in the way of forest de-
struction the country over is appalling
to consider. These young evergreens
are cut in Vermont every year literally
by the hundred thousand, and the
work is doubtless going on in every
other section where frs and spruces
grow-unless the farmers in other Sec
tions are wiser than those of Vermont.
We are cutting off the grown forests
at wholesale to make lumber and pa
per stock, and at the same time are at
work at the other end destroying the
young growth that would otherwise
replace them in part It is true that
in many cases a judicious thinning out
of the young trees would be advan-
tageous to those remaining, but when
the axe and saw take everything, as is
the custom, the loss is irreparable.
And what any one farmer or land
owner gets in return for this vandalism
is hardly enough to pay him for the
tools to do the work with! This is sad
degeneracy from the thrift and far
sightedness of the farmers who made
our hill towns and farms what they
used to be.
While we are discussing in a peda-
gogic way the profit there is in tree
planting and tree-growing as a busi-
ness proposition, there is need also to
discuss this end of the proposition
that of destroying the young growth
which nature herself has planted and
given a ten or fifteen years start
in life. While Audubon societies and
nature classes are showing commenda-
BILE zeal in trying to save the birds
and the flowers, suppose our practical
men of affairs begin to consider what
this wanton destruction of young trees
means.
A few thoughtful men in the cities,
who see what the trade involves, have
been calling a halt for two or three
years past against the unrestricted
use of evergreens at Christmas. The
crusade may yet have to go hand in
hand with that against the wearing
of bird plumage in women's hats.
Even then it wont do any good unless
the majority of men prove more amen
able to sense and sentiment than the
majority of would-be fashionable wom-
en- have done.