What will happen when the forests fail? In the first place, the business
of lumbering will disappear. It is now the fourth greatest industry in
the United States. All forms of building industries will suffer with it,
and the occupants of houses, offices, and stores must pay the added
cost. Mining will become vastly more expensive; and with the rise in the
cost of mining there must follow a corresponding rise in the price of
coal, iron, and other minerals. The railways, which have as yet failed
entirely to develop a satisfactory substitute for the wooden tie (and
must, in the opinion of their best engineers, continue to fail), will be
profoundly affected, and the cost of transportation will suffer a
corresponding increase. Water power for lighting, manufacturing, and
transportation, and the movement of freight and passengers by inland
waterways, will be affected still more directly than the steam railways.
The cultivation of the soil, with or without irrigation, will be
hampered by the increased cost of agricultural tools, fencing, and the
wood needed for other purposes about the farm. Irrigated agriculture
will suffer most of all, for the destruction of the forests means the
loss of the waters as surely as night follows day.
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