Press enter after choosing selection

The Destruction Of Our Forests

The Destruction Of Our Forests image The Destruction Of Our Forests image
Parent Issue
Day
23
Month
March
Year
1888
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

The great apostle of protection is discovered. His name is "X", his residence Ann Arbor and his home organ, the Courier. Just now he is agonized by the idea thatthe Argus may influence Congress to allow Canada to be the sole dictator of the price of lumber. Let "X" keep his coat on. No immediate danger is apprehended. Canada can never díctate the price of lumber in this country so long: as our own timber supply holds out. When that is gone, then, and not till then, will we be at the mercy of Canada. "X" wants Palmer and Alger to make a few million more out of the builders I of homes. The Argus wants that much to stay in the pockets ot those who build and all the pettifogging of"X"cannot disguise these facts. Neither can the statement that the Argus wants the duty retained on sugar.That has nothing whatever to do with this case. The Argus has never said so and never will. If "X" will piek up the proceedings of the Forestry convention held in Grand Rapids in January of this year, which was attended by several of our Ann Arbor friends, he will find the position of the men who have studied this question. Hon. N. A. Beecher, one of the first speakers, spoke of the "admitted fact that wnere one-fourth to one-third of the total area of timber is allowed to grow, we can raise more products of all kinds than where the country is denuded of the same." G. W. Hotchkiss, secretary of the lumber man's exchange, of Chicago, said that Michigan originally had about 150,000,000,000 feet of pine but now had only from 12,000,000,000 to 20,000,000,000. In other words she has now less than one-eighth as much. While at the rate she has been cutting for the past five vears, all the pine now standing in this state will be gone before five more years elapse. Hon. C. W. üarfield read a paper from E. W. Barber in which the following passage occurs: "Wherever the earth has been denuded of its forests, except in very humid regions, and the soil exhausted by man, desolation has come - once gloriously fertile areas becoming arid wastes- and the intenser the summer heat the more complete the desolation. This is painfully true of the fairest portions of Asia, the birth regions of civilization, of literature, of, law, of art, of religión. Persia, Asi Minor, Northern África the Mediterranean States of Europe lost their primacy, in so far as natural causes are concerned, mainly through the destruction of their forests, whereby ,the soil was rendered unable to sustain the needs of progressive people." Probably our friend "X" will attend the next forestry convention and see that such speakers don't have things all their own way. It is enough, to use X's felicitious expression "to make an ordinary anarchist blush with shame." We hope to see the democrats put their best foot forward in the various township nominations this spring. This is a presidential year and care should be taken to keep in good trim. For Governor, Fisher of Bay City. He woukl be the hardest man in the party for the republicans to defeat. He would make the best governor Michigan has had in years. Governor Fisher, let it be. The city government last year spent $38,000. Care should be taken in the selection of men who have the expending of so large an amount of money. That care can best be exercised in the caucuses and the city convention. The Coldwater Courier, like many other republican papers, is just now pleading with the prohibitionists to vote the republican ticket on the ground that the republicans are doing so much for prohibition. The Ann Arbor Gourier thinks this coddling of prohibitionists is losing republican votes. White winged harmony seems to have settled down over the republican camp. Although the mayor and the city council are both strongly re publican, evidently there is not the utmost harmony. The remarkable extract from the mayor's report, published on our first page, indicates this. However it is a quarrel in the republican camp and we must leave them to make up without any advice from us. The democratie ticket put up for their approval this spring ought to be such as to satisiy the intelligent voter that ti,e best way to settle the matter is by electing the democratie ticket. Among the members of the famous free trade Cobden club of England are the editors of two American papers and the propiictor of anottier who delight to tell the voter what dangerous doctrines the Cobden club is spreadingin this country. W. M.Grosvenor, who gets $10,000 year for writing protection articles for the New York Tribune, Murat Halstead, of the Cincinnati Commercial and Cyrus W. Fields, owner of the New York Mail and Express, are members of this club. In other words they do not believe in a high protective tariff and what they publish in their papers is done for money or party. They don't believe in it themselves.

Article

Subjects
Ann Arbor Argus
Old News