forests afford against northern winds to the great agricultural districts which lie to the south of them.
And here I cannot but refer to a most short-sighted policy which our Government has been pursuing in giving a factitious value to lumber made from our own timber, by a so-called protective tax on foreign lumber. While this has operated directly against the building interests of our own people, it, at the same time, has led to the more rapid destruction of our own forests; and, in thus giving protection to the capital employed in lumbering, it is removing the protection which our forests afford to the American agriculturist, thus damaging the people at large in a twofold manner. This must be the case just so far as the forests belonging to the United States afford greater protection to our cultivated fields than is afforded by the forests of Canada. We do not realize the benign influence which our forests to the west and east of the great lakes exercise upon the climate and agriculture of the country. Imagine them all removed; the cold winds from the northwest and northeast, having unobstructed sweep, would reach us with greater force, and, passing over a bleak and treeless region, they would come to us absolutely colder. Our Government, by its protective policy, has been doing something to bring about this undesirable result. It is high time that a wiser policy should prevail, and that the Government should protect by taking its hands off.[1] (It is gratifying to record that, since the above was written, the duty on lumber has been greatly reduced.)
There is no need of attributing more to forests than is their due. There are storms against which they afford no protection—avalanches of cold which rush down upon the country, killing fruit-buds, and even vines, shrubs, and trees. But these are exceptional. It is in the case of somewhat milder cold-storms that forests save, when without them there would be ruin. The great fact of the increasing uncertainty of fruit and agricultural crops with the continued clearing of the country, is a fact so patent, and of import so significant, that it alone is sufficient to prove the great value of forests for protection, and to put us on guard against their wanton destruction.
- ↑ According to an estimate in the Report of the Department of Agriculture for 1870, all the pine-timber in the region between the Mississippi on the west and Lakes Superior and Michigan on the north and east, will, at the present rate of consumption, disappear within the next twelve years, while the hard wood will last only about twelve years longer. Lumbermen do not take all, but what they leave is consumed by the fires which generally follow. About 330,000 acres are denuded annually in this region. This is only a part, perhaps, about half the annual consumption of timber in the northwestern section of our country. To compensate for this loss only about 150,000 acres are annually planted in timber throughout the entire West.
This destruction of timber is general. Even fruit-localities are not spared, as the writer has had abundant opportunity to witness, where the demand for railroad ties at high prices has created almost a furor for coining money out of the great oaks, regardless of consequences to climate and culture.
The alarm about the destruction of timber in this country is only too well founded.
