In those early times, the extent of our forest domain was entirely unknown, and the concern of occasional early voices in public prints regarding a threatened exhaustion of timber supplies can only be explained by the fact that, in the absence of railroads, the supplies near centers of civilization, or near drivable and navigable rivers, were alone of any account. That the earlier propagandists of forest culture received scant attention was due to the fact that conditions soon changed; and with these changes the evil day seemed indefinitely postponed, and the necessity for forest culture apparently vanished. These changes were mainly wrought by the opening up of the west, by extending means of transportation through canals and railroads, and by distributing population, whereby the need for near-by home supplies was overcome; a continental supply of apparently inexhaustible amount was brought into sight and within reach. Meanwhile the population began to grow, immigrants began to pour in by the hundred thousand, and the westward stream opened up new country and new timber supplies, and a lumber industry of marvellous size began to develop. The small country mill, run in the manner of, and often in connection with, the grist mill, doing a petty business by sawing as occasion demanded, to order for home customers or export, gave way to the large mill establishment as we know it now; and with the development of railroad transportation and the settlement of the western country, especially the forestless prairies, the industry grew at an astonishing rate. It is worth while to briefly trace the history of this industry, for the sake of which the need of conservative forest policies is essential. That the petty method of doing business lasted until the middle of the century is evidenced by the census of 1840, which reported 31,560 lumber mills, with a total product valued as $12,943,507, or a little over $400 per mill. By 1876, the product per mill had become $6,500; by 1890, with only 21,000 mills, it was $19,000; in 1900, nearly the same number of mills as were recorded in 1840 (33,035) furnished a product of 566 million dollars, and in 1907, the banner year of production, the cut of 28,850 mills was reported at over 40 billion feet, and the gross product per mill had grown to $23,000, or a value for all of $666,641,367. In 1909, 48,112 mills cut 44,509,761,000 feet valued at $684,479,859. Nearly half this product came from the Southern States. In the fifty years from 1850 to 1900, the value of all forest products harvested increased from $59 million to $567 million, and in 1907 the value had risen to $1,280 million, representing a consumption of over 20 million cubic feet of forest-grown material.