Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 87.djvu/190

186 acres better adapted for timber production than for other purposes. If this were all utilized as described above, and one half of the lumber cut were shipped, while the other half was used locally, the railroads would move annually over 200,000 cars of lumber. Is it unreasonable to expect that railroad executives will spend more thought in the future on the conservation of tributary natural resources, and less on the manipulation of funds, than has been the case in the past? The only alternative may have been already foreshadowed by the action of the federal government in undertaking an extensive railroad policy in Alaska for the proper development of the immense resources of that territory.

More, perhaps, than any other class, the forester is concerned with the material prosperity of the future; not, however, from any narrow professional sense, but because of the far-reaching influence of such prosperity upon the development of the future people. He may, therefore, be pardoned for looking at some of these matters from a somewhat different angle from that in which they are usually regarded.