The early colonizers, settling on the Atlantic Coast soon after the
discoveries of Columbus, did not, as is usually believed, find an
untouched virgin forest. The aboriginal Indians had, before then, hewn
out their corn fields, and had supplied themselves with fuel wood and
material for their utensils; and fires, accidental, intentional, or
caused by lightning, had, no doubt, also made inroads here and there.
The white man, to be sure, is a more lavish wood consumer; his farms
increased more rapidly, his buildings and his fireplaces consumed more
forest growth, and carelessness with fire was, as it is still, his
besetting sin. Moreover, a trade in timber with the Old World developed,
in which only the best and largest-sized material figured. Wastefulness
was bred in him by the sight of plenty, and the hard work of clearing
his farm acres incited a natural enmity to the encumbering forest.
The first sawmill in the New World was erected in 1631 in the town of
Berwick, Maine, and the first gang saw, of 18 saws, in 1650 in the same
place,[18] while, before that time, masts and spars, handmade cooperage
stock, clapboards and shingles formed commonly parts of the return
cargoes of ships. By 1680, nearly 50 vessels, engaged in such trade,
cleared from the Piscataqua River. The ordinances on record which were
issued at the same early times by the town governments of Exeter (1640),
Kittery (1656), Portsmouth (1660), and Dover (1665), restricting the use
of timber, remind us of the early European forest ordinances; they were
probably not dictated by any threatening deficiency of this class of
material, but merely intended to secure a proper and orderly use of the
town property.
[18] See Forestry Quarterly, vol. IV, p. 14.
The appointment of a Royal Surveyor of the Woods for the New England
colonies in 1699, and the penalties imposed in New Hampshire (1708) for
cutting mast trees on ungranted lands ($500 for cutting 24-inch trees),
and in Massachusetts (1784) for cutting White Pine upon the public lands
($100), were probably also merely police regulations, to protect
property rights of the Crown or commonwealth. That this last move was in
no way conceived as a needed conservatism is proved by the fact that two
years later the Legislature of Maine devised a lottery scheme for the
disposal of fifty townships; and 3,500,000 acres were disposed of in
this way during the twelve years following the war. Altogether the
States sacrificed their “wild lands” at trifling prices.
But, when William Penn, the founder and first legislator of the State
which represented his grant, stipulated, in 1682, that for every five
acres cleared one acre was to be reserved for forest growth by those who
took title from him, that may properly be considered an attempt to
inaugurate a conservative policy, dictated by wise forethought,--an
attempt, which, however, bore little or no fruit.
Thoughtful men probably at all times looked with pity and apprehension
upon the wasteful use of the timber as they do now, yet squander went
on, just as it still does; but the apparently inexhaustible supplies in
those early times called for no restriction in its use.
At the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, a
fuel-wood famine must have appeared in some parts of the country, just
as in Germany at that time and for the same reasons, the wood having
been cut along the rivers, which were the only means of transportation,
and hence, the distance to which wood had to be hauled increasing the
cost.
This was probably the reason why the Society of Agriculture, Arts and
Manufactures of New York, after an inquiry by circular letter, issued in
1791, published, in 1795, a report on the “best mode of preserving and
increasing the growth of timber.” This condition probably also led the
wise Governor of New York, DeWitt Clinton, of Erie Canal fame, in a
message in 1822, to forecast an evil day, because “no system of economy”
for the reproduction of forest supplies was being adopted; and he added:
“Probably none will be, until severe privations are experienced.”
Like Great Britain at that time, the federal government became
concerned as regards supplies for naval construction, and, by act
approved in 1799, appropriated $200,000 for the purchase of timber fit
for the Navy, and for its preservation for future use. Small purchases
were made on the Georgia coast, but nothing of importance was done
until, in 1817, another act renewed the proposition of the first, and
directed the reservation of public lands bearing live-oak or cedar
timber suitable for the Navy, as might be selected by the President.
Under this act, a reservation of 19,000 acres was made, in 1828, on
Commissioners, Cypress and Six Islands, in Louisiana. Another
appropriation of $10,000 was made in 1828, and some lands were purchased
on Santa Rosa Sound, where, during a few years, even an attempt at
cultivation was made, including sowing, transplanting, pruning, etc.
This was done under a more general act of 1827, by which the President
was authorized to take proper measures to preserve the live oak timber
growing on the federal lands. Under these acts, altogether some 244,000
acres of forest land were reserved in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and
Mississippi.
But, although another act, of 1831, provided for the punishment of
persons cutting or destroying any Live Oak, Red Cedar, or other trees
growing on any lands of the United States, no general conception of the
need of a broad forest policy, or even of a special value attaching to
the public timberlands dictated these acts, except so far as the
securing of certain material, then believed necessary for naval
construction, was concerned. Indeed, the act of 1831 remained for 60
years the only expression of interest in this part of the federal
domain.
In those early times, the extent of our forest domain was entirely
unknown, and the concern of occasional early voices in public prints
regarding a threatened exhaustion of timber supplies can only be
explained by the fact that, in the absence of railroads, the supplies
near centers of civilization, or near drivable and navigable rivers,
were alone of any account.
That the earlier propagandists of forest culture received scant
attention was due to the fact that conditions soon changed; and with
these changes the evil day seemed indefinitely postponed, and the
necessity for forest culture apparently vanished. These changes were
mainly wrought by the opening up of the west, by extending means of
transportation through canals and railroads, and by distributing
population, whereby the need for near-by home supplies was overcome; a
continental supply of apparently inexhaustible amount was brought into
sight and within reach.
Meanwhile the population began to grow, immigrants began to pour in by
the hundred thousand, and the westward stream opened up new country and
new timber supplies, and a lumber industry of marvellous size began to
develop. The small country mill, run in the manner of, and often in
connection with, the grist mill, doing a petty business by sawing as
occasion demanded, to order for home customers or export, gave way to
the large mill establishment as we know it now; and with the development
of railroad transportation and the settlement of the western country,
especially the forestless prairies, the industry grew at an astonishing
rate.
It is worth while to briefly trace the history of this industry, for the
sake of which the need of conservative forest policies is essential.
That the petty method of doing business lasted until the middle of the
century is evidenced by the census of 1840, which reported 31,560 lumber
mills, with a total product valued as $12,943,507, or a little over $400
per mill. By 1876, the product per mill had become $6,500; by 1890, with
only 21,000 mills, it was $19,000; in 1900, nearly the same number of
mills as were recorded in 1840 (33,035) furnished a product of 566
million dollars, and in 1907, the banner year of production, the cut of
28,850 mills was reported at over 40 billion feet, and the gross product
per mill had grown to $23,000, or a value for all of $666,641,367.
In 1909, 48,112 mills cut 44,509,761,000 feet valued at $684,479,859.
Nearly half this product came from the Southern States.
In the fifty years from 1850 to 1900, the value of all forest products
harvested increased from $59 million to $567 million, and in 1907 the
value had risen to $1,280 million, representing a consumption of over 20
million cubic feet of forest-grown material.
Especially after the Civil War, the settlements of the West grew as if
by magic; the railroad mileage more than doubled in the decade from 1865
to 1875, and with it, the lumber industry developed by rapid strides
into its modern methods and volume. How rapidly the changes took place
may be judged from the fact that, in 1865, the State of New York still
furnished more lumber than any other State; now it supplies only
insignificant amounts, a little over two per cent. of the total lumber
cut.
In 1868, the golden age of lumbering had arrived in Michigan; in 1871,
rafts filled the Wisconsin; in 1875, Eau Claire had 30, Marathon 30, and
Fond du Lac 20 sawmills, now all gone; and mills at La Crosse, which
were cutting millions of feet annually, are now closed. By 1882, the
Saginaw Valley had reached the climax of its production, and the lumber
industry of the great Northwest, with a cut of 8 billion feet of White
Pine alone, was in full blast. The White Pine production reached its
maximum in 1890, with 8.5 billion feet, then to decrease gradually but
steadily to less than half that cut in 1908. Southern development began
to assume large proportions much later; at the present time, the lumber
product of the Southern States has grown to amounts nearly double that
of all the Northern States combined.
But not only the unparalleled and ever increasing wood consumption,
which now has reached 260 cubic feet per capita, five times that of
Germany and ten times that of France, threatened the exhaustion of the
natural supplies. Reckless conflagrations almost invariably followed the
lumberman and destroyed generally the remaining stand, and surely the
young growth. So common did these conflagrations become, that they were
considered unavoidable, and though laws intended to protect forest
property against fires were found on the statute books of every State,
no attempt to enforce them was made.
No wonder that those observing this rapid decimation of our forest
supplies and the incredible wastefulness and additional destruction by
fire with no attention to the aftergrowth, began again to sound the note
of alarm. Besides the writings in the daily press and other non-official
publications, we find the reports of the Department of Agriculture more
and more frequently calling attention to the subject.
In a report issued by the Patent Office as early as 1849, we find the
following significant language in a discussion on the rapid destruction
of forests and their influence on water flow:
“The waste of valuable timber in the United States, to say nothing
of firewood, will hardly begin to be appreciated until our
population reaches 50,000,000. Then the folly and shortsightedness
of this age will meet with a degree of censure and reproach not
pleasant to contemplate.”
In 1865, the Rev. Frederic Starr discussed fully and forcibly the
American forests, their destruction and preservation, in a lengthy
article in which, with truly prophetic vision, he says:
“It is feared it will be long, perhaps a full century, before the
results at which we ought to aim as a nation will be realized by our
whole country, to wit, that we should raise an adequate supply of
wood and timber for all our wants. _The evils which are anticipated
will probably increase upon us for thirty years to come with tenfold
the rapidity with which restoring or ameliorating measures shall be
adopted._”
And again:
“Like a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand just rising from the sea,
an awakening interest begins to come in sight on this subject, which
as a question of political economy will place the interests of
cotton, wool, coal, iron, meat, and even grain, beneath its feet.
Some of these, according to the demand, can be produced in a few
days, others in a few months or a few years, but timber in not less
than one generation. The nation has slept because the gnawing of
want has not awakened her. She has had plenty and to spare, but
within thirty years she will be conscious that not only individual
want is present, but that it comes to each from permanent national
famine of wood.”
The article is full of interesting detail, and may be said to be the
starting basis of the campaign for better methods which followed.
Another unquestionably most influential, official report was that upon
“Forests and Forestry in Germany,” by Dr. John A. Warder, United States
Commissioner to the World’s Fair at Vienna in 1873. Dr. Warder set forth
clearly and correctly the methods employed abroad in the use of forests,
and became himself one of the most prominent propagandists for their
adoption in his own country.
About the same time appeared the classical work of George B. Marsh, our
minister to Italy, “The Earth as Modified by Human Action,” in which the
evil effects on cultural conditions of forest destruction were ably and
forcibly pointed out.
Among these earlier publications designed to arouse public attention to
the subject, should also be mentioned General C. C. Andrews’ report on
‘Forestry in Sweden,’ published by the State Department in 1872.
The Census of 1870 attempted for the first time a canvas of our forest
resources under Prof. F. W. Brewer, as a result of which the relative
smallness of our forest area became known.
All these publications had their influence in educating a larger number
to a conception and consideration of the importance of the subject, so
that, when, in 1873, the committee on forestry of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science was formed and presented a
memorial to Congress, pointing out “the importance of promoting the
cultivation of timber and the preservation of forests, and recommending
the appointment of a commission of forestry to report to Congress,”
there already existed an intelligent audience, and although a
considerable amount of lethargy and lack of interest was exhibited,
Congress could be persuaded, in 1876, to establish an agency in the
United States Department of Agriculture, out of which grew later the
Division of Forestry, a bureau of information on forestry matters. Dr.
Franklin B. Hough, one of the signers of the memorial, was appointed to
the agency. It is to be noted as characteristic of much American
legislation, that this agency was secured only as a “rider” to an
appropriation for the distribution of seed.
While these were the beginnings of an official recognition of the
subject by the federal government, private enterprise and the separate
States also started about the same time to forward the movement. In
1867, the agricultural and horticultural societies of Wisconsin were
invited by the legislature to appoint a committee to report on the
disastrous effects of forest destruction. In 1869, the Maine Board of
Agriculture appointed a committee to report on a forest policy for the
State, leading to the act of 1872 “for the encouragement of the growth
of trees, exempting from taxation for twenty years lands planted to
trees, which law, as far as we know, remained without result. About the
same time a real wave of enthusiasm regarding the planting of timber
seems to have pervaded the country, and especially the Western prairie
States. In addition to laws regarding the planting of trees on highways,
laws for the encouragement of timber planting, either under bounty or
exemption from taxation, were passed in Iowa, Kansas and Wisconsin in
1868; in Nebraska and New York in 1869; in Missouri in 1870; in
Minnesota in 1871; in Iowa in 1872; in Nevada in 1873; in Illinois in
1874; in Dakota and Connecticut in 1875; and finally the federal
government joined in this kind of legislation by the so-called
timber-culture acts of 1873 and 1874, amended in 1876 and 1877.
For the most part these laws remained a dead letter, excepting in the
case of the federal government offer. The encouragement by release from
taxes was not much of an inducement; nor does the bounty provision seem
to have had greater success, except in taking money out of the
treasuries. Finally, these laws were in many or most cases repealed.
The timber-culture act was passed by Congress on March 3, 1873, by which
the planting of timber on 40 acres of land (or a proportionate area) in
the treeless territory, conferred the title to 160 acres (or a
proportionate amount) of the public domain. This law had not been in
existence ten years when its repeal was demanded, and this was finally
secured in 1891, the reason being that, partly owing to the crude
provisions of the law, and partly to the lack of proper supervision, it
had been abused, and had given rise to much fraud in obtaining title to
lands under false pretenses. It is difficult to say how much impetus the
law gave to _bonafide_ forest planting, and how much timber growth has
resulted from it. Unfavorable climate, lack of satisfactory plant
material, and lack of knowledge as to the proper methods, led to many
failures.
A number of railroad companies, opening up the prairie States, planted
at this time groves along the right of way for the sake of demonstrating
the practicability of securing forest growth on the treeless prairies
and plains.
There was also considerable planting of wind-breaks and groves on
homesteads, which was attended with better results. Altogether, however,
the amount of tree planting, even in the prairies and plains, was
infinitesimal, if compared with what is necessary for climatic
amelioration; and it may be admitted, now as well as later, that the
reforestation of the plains must be a matter of co-operative, if not of
national, enterprise.
At this time also, an effort was made to stimulate enthusiasm for tree
planting among the homesteaders and settlers on the plains by the
establishment of arbor days. From its inception by Governor J. Sterling
Morton, and its first inauguration by the State Board of Agriculture of
Nebraska in 1872, Arbor Day gradually became a day of observance in
nearly every State. While with the exception of the so-called treeless
States, perhaps not much planting of economic value is done, the
observance of the day in schools as one set apart for the discussion of
the importance of trees, forests and forestry has been productive of an
increased interest in the subject. Arbor days have perhaps also had a
retarding influence upon the practical forestry movement, in leading
people into the misconception that forestry consists in tree planting,
in diverting attention from the economic question of the proper use of
existing forest areas, in bringing into the discussion poetry and
emotions, which have clouded the hard-headed practical issues, and
delayed the earnest attention of practical business men.
Private efforts in the East in the way of fostering and carrying on
economic timber planting should not be forgotten, such as the offering
of prizes by the Massachusetts Society for the Promotion of Agriculture
(as early as 1804 and again in 1876), and the planting done by private
land holders at Cape Cod, in Rhode Island, Virginia, and elsewhere.
These efforts, to be sure, were only sporadic and unsystematic, and on
no scale commensurate with the destruction of virgin forest resources.
A touching attempt of two noble Frenchmen to teach their American hosts
a better use of their magnificent forest resource, although of little
result, should never fail of mention. André Michaux and his son, André
Francois, who, between 1785 and 1805, explored and studied the forest
flora of the United States, and published a magnificent North American
Sylva in three volumes, left, in recognition of the hospitalities
received, two legacies of $20,000 for the “extension and progress of
agriculture and more especially of silviculture in the United States,”
which bequests became available in 1870. The American Philosophical
Society at Philadelphia, a trustee of one of the legacies, has devoted
its income to beautification of Fairmount Park, providing a few lectures
on forest botany and forestry, and collecting a forestry library, while
the other legacy has been used by the Massachusetts Society for the
Promotion of Agriculture to aid the botanical gardens at Harvard and the
Arnold Arboretum, besides offering the prizes for tree planting referred
to above.