still be almost as valuable as ever for
timber.

Twenty millions of posts are cut each year in the Lake States alone, and
the entire number used is probably two or three times as great.

These constitute the greater uses of wood, not a full and detailed list;
but it plainly shows that all the uses are not only desirable, but
necessary for our comfort and happiness, and that we would not willingly
sacrifice one of them, and in order that this shall not become
necessary, let us see what abuses we can find in the management of our
forests. And here we find the most startling figures of all.

Great and important as is our list of products made from wood, we are
surprised to learn that of all wood cut fully two-thirds is wasted in
the forests, left to decay or burned. The largest forests are now all
located far from the great manufacturing regions, and that means far
from the lumber market. The cost of transportation must be added to
every car of lumber sold. The freight on a car-load of lumber from the
South to Chicago or other points in the middle West is not less than a
hundred dollars, and from the Pacific coast it is very much higher.

It does not pay to send low-grade lumber when the cost is so great, and
as there is no local market a large part of each tree is burned. All the
upper end of the trunk and all branches are thus destroyed, although
much valuable timber is contained in them.

At one mill in Alabama a pile of waste wood and branches as high as a
two-story house burns night and day throughout the year, and that is
probably true of all the larger mills.

If the timber could be conservatively managed as are live-stock
products, so that all the waste could be utilized, all the small
articles, shingles, lath, posts, tan-bark and extract, pulp-wood, wood
for distillation and small manufactured articles would be made
by-products of the larger cuts.

Much has been said of the greed of large lumber companies in causing
wholesale and reckless destruction of the forests, and much of it is
doubtless true, but the lumber companies cite the fact that no farmer
will gather a crop of corn which will not pay for the labor cost of
gathering, and say that at the present prices of lumber they can not pay
the present freight rates to the factories. It seems therefore that a
certain amount of waste is unavoidable unless wood-working plants are
established near the forest regions.

The first great step in conserving our