GREAT RESOURCES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 1989, 12 June 1919, Page 2

GREAT RESOURCES.

THAT Russia and Siberia arc still rich in limber and minerals, in addition to their vast agricultural resources, was asserted by Mr W. G. ’Mitchell, in a lecture under the auspices of the American-Russian Chamber of Commerce in New York recently. Mr Mitchell, a Canadian mining; engineer, based his statements on his own experiences covering a period of two years’ travels in European and Asiatic Russia for the purpose of studying these conditions. In addition to their great agricultural resources, Russia and Siberia present interesting opportunities for development along other lines. One of the great demands throughout the world to-day is for lumber. Russia, said the lecturer, is fortunate in possessing the hugest reserves of limber in the world; the forest areas of the Russian' Empire, exclusive of Finland, amount to over 1,337,000,000 acres, as compared with Canada with 800,000,000 acres, and the United States with 000,000,000 acres. The Russian forests are 2.1 times as great as those of the United Stales, and include such important limber supplies as Baltic pine, white spruce, iir, Siberian pine, eastern spruce, and Nordmaim fir, as well as such hard woods as oak, ash, birch, etc. The Siberian forests aro practically unknown and little developed as yet. In European Russia, the important centres for timber production are the Archangel district, the Baltic regions, and the Lower Volga country. The increase in the volume of the Russian timber trade during the 10 years from 1003 to 1013 was 125 per cent. The organisation, of the limber industry in Russia, the development of lumber production and of the pulp industry, will he three, of the basic factors in Russia's economic reconstruction. There is a splendid opportunity for America to assist in organising Russia’s timber industry a,ml in supplying Russia with her great requirements of sawmill and woodworking machinery. Russia presents one of the few great undeveloped fields of mineral rvcalth in the world. To develop its mineral wealth, Russia will require outside assistance in the form of organising ability, in the form of capital investment, and there is no question that Russia presents alluring possibilities for a participation in an economic and industrial expansion which will parallel that of the United States dining the last 50 wars.