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Las diagrammas sulvants illustrant ia mAthoda. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 MtCROCOfY nSOUmON TBT CHAIT (ANSI ofid ISO TEST CHART No. 2) 3J2 US u ■tuu 1^6 1 4.0 23 2.2 2.0 1.8 ji x^PPLIED IN/HGE I, nc 1653 East Main Street Rochester. New York 14609 USA (716) 4«2 - 0300 - Phofte (716) 288 -5989 -Fax 4 Jl i I V^ THE POSITION ae«ie BY ONE OF THEMSELVES /f^^. (SL? sV ^tMJLA^ «> I ^ -gyT^ ^,' i aV I TTHE recent speeches of Messrs. Kelly and Prevost in the Legis- lative Assembly at Quebec regarding the Limit Holder and the settler, are the entering wedges of a dangerous attack upon the rights of the former. While neither of these gentlemen are as rabid in their utterances as others have be«i, it is quite evident that they regard the rights of the Limit Holder as secondary- to the supposed interests of the Colonist and the people at large of Quebec. It is quite certain that their remarks, if allowed to re- main unanswered, will appeal to the average person who is uninformed as to the true conditions. They propose in one way or the other to take the timber from the Limit Holder who has purchased it from the people in good faith and give it back to some of thQ people without reimbursing the Limit Holder. Stripped of all verb- iage what they propose to do amounts Ii ~ to oonfiscation and nothing less. The so-called adyocates of the rights of the settlers are blindly ignoring the rights of anybody else and in order to accomplish their ends are quite wil- ling to see great industries which are not only of value but a necessity to the whole Province destroyed. Granted that in some eases these p^ple are sincere, they never under- stand the subject they are discussing. They jumble up the laws of Forestry, the preservation of the waterways, colonization and the aggressions of the Limit Holders to such an extent that the speech or argument which ex- ploits such views as Messrs. Kelly and Prevost express and which oau not be shown to be absolutely ridi- culous has yet to be made. The fact is, the forests of Canada have been so large, that when the Government has taken a few miles from a Limit Holder the latter has done little but grumble, always thinking there was plenty left, • I f .\ <» f and this quiesoeDt attitude has led to more and more aggreftsions on their rights, hat it is now high time a halt was called and the position clearly defined so that the situation can not be left at the mercy of every change in politics or used as a battle cry by one party or another. It is true that the forests of Quebec are of vast in- terest to the people of that Province, but this means the whole people of this Province and not the comparative few who live on the edge of the forest and who desire to get the timber without paying for it. What does a settler do with his forest lot ? He strips it as fast as he can and then tries to get another, in the meantime stealing as much as he can from the Limit Holder besides. He pays nothing to the people for the stumpage and inakes no return what- ever for what he receives. He pays no fire tax, although he is the cause of most of the fires» in fact that are I many instanoee in which he will not go a hundred yards to put a pail of water on a fire, which perhaps a few days later all the fire apparatus in Cajiada dbuld not extinguish. After he has burned or cleared off all the land in his immediate vicinity* either he or some of his smarter neighbors go to their representatives, and the old familiar whine about the poor colo- nist is raised. Now on the other band let us see what the Timber Limit Holder does. To start with, he purchases his limit either from the Government or some one to whom the Government has sold and he then proceeds to organize his business. He builds roads and \lams and improves the rivers making it possible to float logs on rivers that have hitherto been impassible. He purchases land for his mill sites and erects the necessary buildings. When he purchases the ' limits, if it is not done directly from itie Government, 4 •f t '> I k I .4 he pays a transfer tax of $4 per mWe iuid after that he pays $3 per square mUe annuaUy and a fire tax as well In addition to the ahove he pays the people an enormous sum every year for stumpage. Aooording to thesiae of the operation he probably gives employment directly or indirectly to everybody in the usuaUy vpaneiy settled districts around him. He makes it possibly for these people to remain in their homes and on their farms inste&d of going to the States. He usually directly increasee the business of every tradesman in the place where he is located and more than that he makes it possible tot them to gfive credit to the people who are working for him, and as a rule he is a steady contributor to the Church and the poor in his vicinity. He buys his machinery from the manufactur- ing parts of Canada and his constant need of supplies of all kinds is in a measure one of the greatest support- 8 era of miscellaneous CaDadian trade. Outside -of the fire tax he pays, he employs more and better men than the Goyemment does as fire rang^ers. He is a better practical forester than any theorist so far as his own terri- tory is concerned, for as a rule, any set of limits of any size is in this respect a proposition by itself and there are certain matters in connec- tion with the cutting which can nci be regulated by any fixed rules, for instance, there may be found sections of territory wh^re spruce grows so thickly that it chokes and stunts its own gprowth like a garden filled with weeds, there is not enough nourish- ment in the soil and this condition urill remain until it is thinned out, which must be done before it will produce merchantable timber. Again there are sections of country where a dry rot will attack the trees after they attain a medium size and this is probably due to another c<»idition of "I ■ *'-J»J»^-."— ■ I . the soil, it is particularly the case with lowland balsam and spruce, and if the tree is to be utilized, it must be cut before it attains the size specified by the present regulation. I have noticed the same thing is true of pine in cer- tain localities. All modern lumber- men are familiar with these facts and conserve their forests by cutting ac- cordingly, it is to their best interest to do so and results in the most prac- tical forestry. We are to be congratulated upon the fact that the forestry enthusiast of the present day is beginning to recognize these facts and consequently the lumberman and those who are interested in forestry are getting very close together in their ideas, each can teach the other something. The greater part of the remaining forest lands in Quebec are unfit for cultivation^ and even where they are so, to some extent they by no means repay the people of the province at 10 large, they may support a miserable funily while the timber is being cut and then all there is to show for it is denuded land and a tumbled down cabin, while the effort to clear that particular place is sure to have done more or less damage by fire. The abandoned farms of New Hampshire, Connecticut and other States, show the futility of some of the coloniza- tidn dreams. What forest is left in the State of New York is a good example of what causes the real des- truction of forest land. There where the lumberman is undisturbed by settlements he is going over the same cuttings time and time again and will be undefinitely, and the forest l^nds are many times the value of the adjacent cleared lands not only to the individual who owns it but to the States, and this is so recognized by the latter. Where forest land is destroyed the water courses are spoiled or ruined, \ II I i. i I the spongy or upper soil is gone and the water running over bare grounds results in too much at one time and not enough in another to the great injury in many instances of manu- facturing interests. Mr. Kelly does not seem to wish to be unreasonable, but apparently he is only acquainted with one side of the controversy. He suggests that a Limit Holder might be given land in one place to compensate him for that taken from him in another and this suggestion is evidently made in a spirit of fair play, but how absurd it would be to take property adjacent to a market away and substitute for it land which is possibly near no available market, or take another ins- tance, does Mr. Kelly mean that after a man has expended many thousands and perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars in improvements and esta- blishing his business that he should be told to move on and leave these 12 behind ? There is only one excuse for taking away the timber from a ligi- timate Limit Holder and that is public necessity, and in that case it should be expropriated and full dam- age paid to the owner. The existing interpretation of the forest laws is due more to greed and unscrupulous- ness than anything else and in most cases those who are talking of looking after the interests of the settler are merely covering up their own at- tempts to despoil others. Mr. Kelly attempts to excuse some of his cons- tituttits for holding lots without ful- filUng conditions under which the}' veceivod them claiming that the lots (MO. not be reached for want of roads, iy^ others to be robbed because Mr. Kelly's f reinds chose to select their lots in unaccessible places, the very fact that they have located these lots and do not live on them is enough to show that they are not b&ua-fide settlers. X IH I ;. i It would be intereeting to know How many business interests are clo- sely allied with ours in the above, starting out with two of the greatest, namely the Banks and the Railroads it would seem as though we would receive great support from all sides if we are only wise enough to look after our own interests. If the lumberman could be certain that his timber would not be taken from him, it would not only encour- age him to preserve what he has but would probably result in his rendering valuable assistance in reforestnng denuded or burned lands. The whole colonization programme is entirely inconsistent with preserving the for- ests and the waterways because the settler must clear the land absolutely if he want9 a farm and this is the only excuse he has for bi ^^g given a timber lot at the expense o. the people and the Limit Holder. ' Of course so far as the remaining u Xv |ml:^c lands are concerned, the GdV- «irtiBie&t can act as its policy dictates, bill tiiere is no shadow of an excuse for taking away the timber from one man to whom they have already sold it and giving it to another, and un- derneath the attempts to do so, per- sonal motives in many cases can be found. ■ V: --- i I •»>