er for them to get. If the brooks dried up, the rivers would dry up,
too. Why--why--what in the world would we do? There wouldn't be any water
to drink or wash in or cook with or run our factories. Why, great Caesar!
If the forests vanished, I guess we'd be up against it. I never thought of
the forests as furnishing anything but lumber. And I never thought much
about that until we tried to buy a little lumber the other day and the
dealer wanted ten dollars for half a dozen boards."

"Exactly!" said the stranger. "That's the price you and I and the rest of
us in Pennsylvania pay for allowing our forests to be destroyed."

"They haven't all been destroyed," protested Lew.

"No, but the greater part of them have been."

"You don't mean really destroyed, do you?" asked Lew.

"Yes, sir. Absolutely destroyed. You came up this valley, didn't you?"

"Sure," said Charley.

"Would you call the forest there destroyed?"

"If it isn't, I don't know how you would describe it," said Lew.

"All right, then. There are some 45,000 square miles in this state.
Originally practically all of that area was dense forests. The early
settlers thought the timber would last forever and they cut and destroyed
it recklessly. The lumbermen that followed were just as wasteful. It was
all right to clear the land that was good for farming. But there are more
than 20,000 square miles in this state just like these mountains--land
that is fit for nothing but the production of timber. None of that land is
producing as much timber as it should. Much of it yields very little. And
more than 6,400 square miles are absolutely desert, as bare and hideous as
the burned valley below us. That's one acre in every seven in
Pennsylvania. Think of it! Six thousand, four hundred square miles, an
area larger than the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island put together,
that is absolute desert! Every foot of that land ought to be producing
timber for us. Then we should have lumber at a fraction of its present
cost. You see the freight charges alone on the lumber used in this state
are enormous."

"That lumber dealer told us they amounted to $25,000,000 a year," replied
Lew.

"They do," assented the stranger. "And when the new freight rates go into
effect the amount will be $40,000,000. What it will be when we get our
wood from the Pacific coast I have no idea, but I suppose it will be at
least double what it is now, anyway."

"The Pacific coast!" cried Lew. "W