The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-03-25
mExrco.s FINE FORESTS.


 '"rhe Murderers of the Pine." as they have been.not inaptly called, are cast ing longing eyes towards Mexico. hav- ing pretty well finished up the home product. The desoiation." says The Albany Herald, which has been wrought in the once magnificent pine and hardwood forests of the United States is one of the saddest things in all our history. The lumberman bus taken the choicest trees, leaving the brush behind to die and become fuel for raging forest fires that have laid waste tremendous areas. Hardly less wasteful and destructive have been the methods of the turpentine farmer. who seems never to have had thought of the future Forests that should have lasted us for all time have been laid Tow so rapidly that the nation Is face to face with q wood famine the extent and seriousness of which not one Ann erican in . hundred begins to conipre- nenu. ouT Wdoto VI 8AO0t A0 sources has been nothing less than criminal
 The destruction of the timber is not only a sad thing but in some of its as- poets 1t is discreditable and serious re- fiection on our intelligence as a people. The lumberers, the mill men. the tim ber cutters and the turpentine dis tillers: all. in fact. who have had any thing to do with the yellow pine for ests of the country apparently set out with the belief that the supply was in- exhaustible. and pursued their way on the principle that they must get all they could in order to keep somebody else from getting part of it. With them 1t is ''every man for himself and de'il take the hindmost."
 And, what was equally inexcusable, the lumbermen made no effort to get all they coald out of the trees they cut down. Instead of trying to use all of a fine tree that could be profitably used they would take only the choi- cest part of the trunk and leave the remainder of the tree to rot or be burned. The total lack of any attempt to conserve the forests or the individ- ual members of the forests did its part towards hastening the end that has al- ready come in many portions of the and tr In all man will not have to live a great many years to see the end of the yellow pine in the South.
 And now, having practically made an end of the pine in our own country tho lumber and turpentine people are sigh ing for other worlds to conquer. and where the pine forests are as yet prac- tically undisturbed. It is estimated that there are six or seven million acres of yellow pine in that country which even the turpentine gatherer has hardly molested in the slightest degree. The trees are as nature formed them, and are said to be magnificent speci- mems of their race, in all their original beauty and stateliness. promising a rich reward to those who may be- so fortunate as to harvest them.
 And it is to this mine of wealth that our American lumbermen and mill owners are turning longing eyes. These millions of acres of virgin forests rep sent many millions of dollars to chose who can obtain the right to cut them Mexico will do well to protect her for ests, else in few years the timber will go the way our own has gone and no way to replenish the supply, for re- foresting denuded land with yellow pine would be the work of generations even if it can be successfully done at all As our Georgia contemporary says Mexico may well put out double guards" if she has any wish to get the best results from her forest treasures