TIMBER TALK. A Market to be Avoided.

Free Lance, Volume III, Issue 127, 6 December 1902, Page 8

TIMBER TALK. A Market to be Avoided.

THICRE are a few hundred acres erf young saplings growing up in New Zealand that will be good nulling timber in a thousand years or so if they are not torn up for whipstioks, otr burnt oft to get ground in whddh to sink pot>boles for gold or gum. There are miany thousands of acres of decent timber yet standing, and there are hundreds of thousands of stumps, representing sawn timber behind which we live. But, Africa has its eye on our timbers, if one is to believe letters written on the subject, and we are told that there is a market in Africa for kauri, rimu, kahikatea, and all thic rest of ota- building timber ; also, that this market is capable of being developed enormously. * * • Well, it certainly will take a large timber 3iipply from this and a few other small islands to re-ereot the houses burnt by John Bull, and theie is no doubt that the mice offering will be princely. It was enormous before the war, and the demand since will make it fabulous. Our timber w ould be found eminently suitable for Africa, and, being lesanous, would make a big blaze when Tommy Atkins was burning off a second time. It may be right to sell our raw products in the dearest ma-ket, and it is probable that timber " .>r«hj.nis not concerned for the future ] ir p . supply will fill every order offer i>£ but it seems to be poor policy for New Zealand to get rid of her timber by send.ng it aw&y, and to be herself dependent on outside supplies. A kauri tree does not giow in a eai . Even the kahikatea does not attain its sappy majority in that time, and a rimu sapling planted twenty years ago is not fit to cut into weatherboards yet. Africa could take the whole of our forests, sawn up in boards, and then yawn for more from the Baltic, Oregon, or Siberia. It could malce several little timber kings m New Zealand without delay, and impoverish this colony permanently. Timber us dvdi now in New Zealand. The mills ai-e kept going full tame supplying local and Australian orders, and the price is still advancing. • ♦ * If Africa is going to elo "an immense timber trade" with us, then.it is tune to set about getting a substitute for home use. Even in supplying local needs there is a sinful waste of timber in New Zealand. People are in such a hurry to accumulate wealth, tihat they leave a few thousand feet of timber for stumps, which are afterwards burnt off, and end in smoke. There are millions of feet of potential timber burnt c-r cleared to get at the marketable logs. Let the future generations grow timber of

then own, 01 import it. We have no concern with their needs. * » • We suppose ]f a person has property in raw products, and is able to get double the price for them abroad, he wall not worry about the needs of his next-door neighbour, and if timber seait abroad, will bulge books suddenly, they will have to bulge, to the ultimate detriment of the oountry. We have a right, as a small country wlirich says it has a name, to depend more on the finislhed work of our hands, and not the raw products of the soil. We should bedieve we have a saored duty to do in refusing to send any of our raw material out of the country that can with advantage be kept in it, however satisfactory the price. » ♦ • You can grow oats and potatoes, wool and wheat, flax and onions, before your latest-born is a year old, but when ho is greyheaded the sapling you planted at the same time- will be a very youthful aiFaar. Just beoaiuse New Zealand timbers are among the finest in the world, the world, of course, wants them, and, although it wants them, our necessity is just as pressing as theirs and our duty is right here. It may be a good advertisement to haivei Afrikanders' houses built of kauri, standing on puriri piles, but if we ourselves have got to use Oregon weatherboards and redwood piles the economy does not strike one. ♦ • • Finally, scarcity of timber in this country has raised the rents already. By the time Africa has all the New Zealand timber it would like to have, we shall be living m corrugated-iron houses (made in America), or paying rent at so much per weatherboard. Don't send timber to Afrioa, don't send it up in smoke, don't be dependent on other countries for your four walls, and do leave us a few trees to have a picnic under now and then.