that land, and because it is worth more money to him now than when he bought it?

Mr. LACEY. I do not see how you can criticise him for doing that any more than you can criticise any other men who have acquired government lands.

The CHAIRMAN. I do not think there is any question about that, and I do not think we ought to go into it.

Mr. LACEY. In the South, from 1880 to 1887, the uniform prices of government lands were $1.25 an acre except where there had been railroad grants. Where there were those grants the land was worth $2.50 an acre. It does not make any difference whether that land had lumber or not, it was $1.25 an acre. After it was entered the Government then withdrew the lands, and few were left subject to homestead entries. In Louisiana and other Southern States the price then began to advance. Before that there was no big value. A man that came down there could get government lands for $1.25 an acre, and therefore you could not get $2.50 an acre for your lands.

Mr. FORDNEY. I have known Mr. Weyerhauser for a good many years, and have had dealings with him, and you have doubtless known him much longer than I have. Have you ever known him to do anything that could be called dishonest; have you ever known him to do anything in his life that was wrong?

Mr. LACEY. NO; I have never heard him criticised in any way other than that he was a man of wonderful ability, and he is recognized as a man who has been a pioneer all his life; he has been a man who has gone into the forests and developed the country. Wherever Mr. Weyerhaeuser has gone development and civilization has followed in a most substantial manner.

Mr. FORDNEY. The question was asked you if it was not likely that he would be able to keep out of the poorhouse with careful management. Do you know of any reason why he should go to the poorhouse?

Mr. LACEY. I do not. I do not understand why a man of his ability and enterprise and good judgment should have to go to the poorhouse or why he should be considered a conspirator

Mr. FORDNEY. The intelligent people of the country admire a man like that; they admire his ability and enterprise and philanthropy? Mr. LACEY. I think so.

Mr. CLARK. If Mr. Weyerhaeuser and Mr. McCormick got that million acres of land at 15 cents a thousand feet, do you think the people of the United States ought to be taxed to give them $2 bonus a thousand feet where they spent 15 cents?

Mr. LACEY. Well, I do not think you are taxing them to give that money to Mr. Weyerhaeuser or Mr. McCormick. I am sure if you do not put that $2 on lumber you will have to put it on something else. You might economize, but you are not going to save anything by taking that tax off and putting it somewhere else.

Mr. CLARK. Suppose you did not put it anywhere else?

Mr. LACEY. Well, then, we would live cheaper and would not build any of these canals or other things.

Mr. CLARK. Well, they are issuing bonds for the canal.

Mr. FORDNEY. In your opinion, is it not true that Mr. Weyerhaeuser and his associates employ more men in the lumber industry in this country than are employed in any other one business?

Mr. LACEY. I think that is probably true, with the possible exception of the United States Steel Company. I think possibly they employ more men than any other company.

Mr. FORDNEY. I am referring to the lumber business. Does the lumber business not employ more men than any other industry, and does it not pay an American scale of wages?

Mr. LACEY. Well, the lumber men all over the country have developed the country. You may take wherever the lumber men have gone and bought timber lands. The lumber men have gone in and they have induced railroads to come in, and as a result civilization and development have taken place and towns and cities have grown up.

In Louisiana in 1880 the entire assessed valuation of Calcasieu Parish was $520,000. In 1897 it was $22,000,000. That increase had come about by reason of the development of rice cultivation. They spent millions of dollars in the building of canals.

You take it all over the United States and you will find that the lumberman has been the pioneer in the development of the country. The CHAIRMAN. Are there any other questions on this subject that are germane?

Mr. FORDNEY. Not from me.

The CHAIRMAN. That seems to be all with this witness, and we will hear Mr. Walker.

STATEMENT OF MR. T. B. WALKER, OF MINNEAPOLIS, MINN.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Walker, representative of the Red River Lumber Company.

Mr. WALKER. I am a representative sent here by the Lumber Association of the Northwest, of the Mississippi.

I am president of the Red River Lumber Company, but I do not come here representing that corporation.

I dislike to come before you at this time of the night. You are tired. You have given better attention to this subject to-day than I have ever known a similar body of men to give to any subject.

The CHAIRMAN. Please speak a little louder.

Mr. WALKER. I say I have observed you carefully to-day, and I think you have given better attention to this tariff subject, to everyone who has spoken, than I have ever known any similar body of men to give to anyone. Consequently you must be tired and weary, and no doubt you would be pleased to have me cut short my remarks, and I promise you that I will not make them very long.

I do not intend to take up this question along the lines that have been presented before you,

The only essential point that I care to consider is that of the conservation of the forests and the underlying facts and principles which have led to the destruction of our forests up to the present time, and which will continue to accomplish the same purpose with reference to the remainder of the timber we have on our public lands and private lands.

The conservation committee of the forestry department are now, as a preliminary and primary question, investigating the subject of overproduction and overconsumption, in order to determine it as a factor in what has been in the past and to see what it will accomplish in the future.

In order to understand more completely the facts which would lead to the destruction of our forests, and where the responsibility lies, it is necessary to review more at length than I would venture to do here to-night, to see what is being done on the part of the Government in handling this timber in the manner in which they have done it, and which has been the prime factor in compelling the lumberman to destroy the forests, and which, if it continues in the future, will result in the same outcome for the remaining forests which now exist, particularly the vaster ones on the Pacific coast.

The object in repealing this duty, as I understand it, is to cheapen lumber to the consumers.

The Forestry Department and the conservation committee believe that if you reduce it, it will not reduce the price of lumber; that if it would reduce it, it would be unfavorable and unfortunate in the conservation of the remainder of our timber.

The policy of our Government in disposing of the timber lands has been on the lines that have been to distribute the timber to the people of the country to the greatest extent that was possible.

For that reason the homestead law and the other laws have been made applicable not only to the farming lands, to give the settler a home, but to give to each and every one who chooses to go into the timber lands and take up one or two country sections, and to take them at a profit, that is as a speculative venture, in order to get the difference between the government price and that which would come in selling it to the lumbermen, and in doing this in place of allowing it to fall into larger areas, where lumbering could be done economically and cheaply, the same as our competitors over the line in Canada could do, it has been only scattered holdings, and there is not a lumberman that I know of in the United States, or at least in our part of it, who owns as much as any one solid township of timber, but in every township all through there are different ownerships, where the lumbermen do go and take it through the agency of this method which the Government has provided for disposing of or distributing the public lands or the profit on them.

That has led the lumberman to have an extra expense in logging. Over in Canada the custom has been for many years, and it was before I began logging in Minnesota, over forty years ago, we had Canadian competition, which enabled them to do their logging at a much lower price and get their stumpage from the government at a lower price, which would make probably a stumpage of $1.50 less than ours, and logging of not less than $1, probably nearer $2, taxes and interest, which they do not have to pay, and which we have to pay, to the extent that they will make an average on all the lumber cut by anyone that will build a mill and stock it up for a term of years, it will make our taxes on all our property, the standing timber, the logs that are cut, the sawmill and yards, the lumber stock, it will average at least $2 a thousand on all the lumber that we cut. Then the manufacturing is $1 less, and that is too small. These are all conservative. It will run for the years until-well, perhaps equal to the present time in all except interior, which has been opened up for two years, not less than $5.50 a thousand on the logs, which would make the present price about $4 on the lumber, and on all that of the previous years, when there was no overrun, it made the value $5 a thousand.

Most of the years that I have been in business we had no tax, and we had to work against that odds, and in order to accomplish it we had to do during all those years just as they are doing in the South, as you heard a few moments ago, leaving more than one-half of their timber, and just as they are doing on the Pacific coast to-day, and just as they will continue to do unless there is a change in the methods and manner of dealing with the lumber men and with the lumber business, so as to give it a protection sufficient to make it worth while to conserve the timber, and to take out not half or two-thirds, but to take out all of it, and in that way to make the forests extend over a multiple, you might say, of years, as it can not do under the present conditions.

Under those conditions, under which our forests have disappeared, when in our lumber mills we got such lumber only as the Scribner's scale of the logs, we got no overrun; we might, under proper conditions, have got 60 per cent overrun if we had sawed and put it into lumber in the most economical manner; we might have got a 60 per cent overrun. We could not do that.

The price of lumber was in fact so low that all we could do would be to take out the upper grades that would bring a price sufficient to enable us during all those years to pay even a smaller rate of wages, which we paid then.

If we can make the forests of to-day, by means of proper conservation, produce over 300 per cent of the amount of available or useful or practical lumber, in the place of the 100 per cent that has been produced within the past eight or ten years, then if we apply that to the future forests, and enable the lumber man to accomplish it in a way that will pay him for his extra cost and his expenses for doing it, it will enable him when it becomes developed to produce a lumber that will furnish this country, at only a fraction of what will be, if we continue right on as we are until we reach the end, and we are coming to it very rapidly

Mr. HILL. Do you advocate an increased duty or an unchanged duty or free trade in lumber?

Mr. WALKER. Gentlemen, if I was disconnected from the lumber business, from being an owner of timber, I would pledge you that from my knowledge of the timber business, if I was disconnected from ownership of it and was a buyer of lumber to the extent comparatively that I am the manufacturer of and owner of timber, I would say to you not only to observe this, but to give it an additional tariff for the best interests of the people of this country. Mr. CLARK. You are a manufacturer of lumber?

Mr. WALKER. Yes, sir.

Mr. CLARK. And have been at it for about forty years, I understand?

Mr. WALKER. Yes, sir.

Mr. CLARK. In addition to that, you own 650,000 acres of sugarpine land in California, do you not?

Mr. WALKER. No, sir.

Mr. CLARK. How much do you own?

Mr. WALKER. I could not tell you. I own a good sized tract.

Mr. CLARK. About 650,000 acres?

Mr. WALKER. No; it is not that much.

Mr. CLARK. It cost you about $1,000,000, did it not?

Mr. WALKER. I am glad to find out what it cost me. I did not know just what it cost me.

Mr. CLARK. Estimated to have 18,000,000 feet of lumber in it.

Mr. WALKER. I heard some young man here who knows no more about my business than any other young fellow who could pick up something of that kind, except that he made some notes and figures which he had gathered

Mr. CLARK. You estimate your present holdings of sugar-pinelands in California at 100,000,000 feet, do you not?

Mr. WALKER. No, sir.

Mr. CLARK. Well, what do you estimate them at?

Mr. WALKER. Oh, I own several hundred thousand acres of land. Mr. CLARK. It has a good deal to do with whether you ought to have a duty of $2 a thousand feet?

Mr. DALZELL. I do not think it has anything to do with it; I think it is a man's private business.

Mr. CLARK. Well, we will see if we can find out.

Mr. WALKER. There was a statement made that there was onethird of all the public timber land owned by three persons-myself, Mr. Weyerhæuser and Mr. Smith.

Mr. CLARK. I wish you would tell us, if you know, about how much land you have in California.

Mr. WALKER. I do not know what particular difference that makes

Mr. CLARK. It makes a good deal of difference; it goes to the credibility of your evidence, if you want to know the plain, bald truth

about it.

Mr. WALKER. I have never figured up the amount of lumber that I own. Probably it is half a million acres.

Mr. CLARK. Do you think the people of the United States ought to be taxed $2 a thousand to be presented to you, who have 500,000 acres of timber land?

Mr. WALKER. I do not think any such thing.

Mr. CLARK. You said awhile ago you thought it ought to be raised, to protect the lumbermen. Is not that simply protecting the stumpage? According to all the testimony here, the only people that get anything out of this $2 tariff tax on lumber are the men that own the stumpage.

Mr. WALKER. The rise in lumber has given more to labor, has given a greater increase in the wages of labor, than has gone to the stumpage men. That has been the case during all the years that I have been in the business. Whenever lumber rises, if it goes up 50 per cent, wages go up more than 50 per cent, and take out a proportion greater in proportion than the money that goes to the stumpage men.

Mr. CLARK. Do the laborers in the lumber business get any more than the laborers in the steel business?

Mr. WALKER. They do not get quite as much, because there is not so much protection by means of which it can be paid to them.

Mr. CLARK. Do they get any more wages than any occupation of this hard labor?

Mr. WALKER. In proportion to the value of the lumber, they get a greater proportion of rise as the lumber gets higher than the manufacturer gets. They get a greater percentage of it, and it is the law