“Why can’t they use anything except spruce and balsam?” asked Lou. “Won’t other kinds of wood make paper?” “They’ll make paper,” said Mr. Rogers, “but the fibre isn’t tough enough to stand the strain of the presses. You know, a newspaper press has to print many thousands of copies an hour; it runs at high speed. The paper is on a huge roll, and it unwinds like a ribbon into the press. It has to be tough enough so that it won’t break as it is being unwound. There’s a fortune waiting for the man who can invent a tough paper which can be made out of cornstalks, or something which can be grown every year, like a crop. Think how it would save our forests! I’m told that every Sunday edition of a big New York newspaper uses up about eleven acres of spruce.” “Gee, Sunday papers ain’t worth it!” Art exclaimed. “They are not, that’s a fact,” Mr. Rogers agreed. “I don’t see,” Lou put in, “why a paper mill couldn’t buy up a great tract of woodland, and then forest it scientifically, taking out the big trees every year, and planting little ones. I shouldn’t think it would cost any more than it would to haul lumber to the mills from all over creation.” “It wouldn’t, Lou,” said Mr. Rogers, “but we in America haven’t learned yet to do things that way. Our big mills and business concerns are all too careless and selfish and wasteful. And the public is paying the penalty. Look at that----” They had come around a bend in the road, close to the north shoulder of the mountain now, and could see how all the upper slopes had been stripped down to bare soil by the lumbermen. “That soil will probably dry out, landslides or fires will come, and it may be a thousand years before the mountain is forested again,” Mr. Rogers exclaimed. “It’s a perfect outrage!” The party presently came into a crossroad, running east and west. It was a bit more traveled than the one they were on. They turned down it to the left, and reached a curious settlement, or rather the remains of a settlement. There were several rough, unpainted board houses, a timber dam across a small river, and everywhere on the ground lay old sawdust, beginning to rot down, with bushes growing up through it. “This is Wildwood. It’s all that remains of a lumber town,” said Mr. Rogers. “The mill stood by that dam. They cleared all this end of the valley many years ago, and sent their lumber on teams down the Wild Ammonoosuc valley to the railroad.” The party now turned south again, crossed the Wild Ammonoosuc at the dam, and began ascending gradually along a road which seemed to be making for the notch on the west side of Moosilauke. “Only two miles more to the base,” said the Scout Master. Art looked at his watch. “It’s only eleven o’clock,” he said. “Couldn’t we have a swim in that brook down there? I’m awful hot.” “Me, too,” said Peanut. “And my bloomin’ old boot is hurting my heel. I want to fix it.”