Then, and only then, I learned that certain lumbermen had quietly done their work where they believed, rightly, that it would be effective, and that the bill would not pass the assembly. An effective lobby, headed by a Filipino representative of the largest Filipino lumbering concern in the islands, had been organized against it, and so a measure having no other object or effect than to prevent frauds on the government and increase its revenue, was killed, for the time at least, consideration of the bill being "deferred," by the assembly, with the result that a large number of foreign mill owners will be allowed to continue to make an illegitimate profit, and a very limited number of Filipino mill owners will do the same. The commercial outlook for the Philippine lumber industry is very encouraging. No more greedy lumber market exists than Manila has offered during the past few years, this condition being due primarily to the stimulus given to all lines of industrial development by the economic policy of the insular administration. Prices are high, and the supply is still unequal to the local demand. Forest products to the value of $696,407 were last year imported into the Philippines when we should have exported them in large quantities. A lumber company properly equipped and managed, and operating on a suitable tract, can place lumber in its Manila yards at a cost of half or even less than half the price at which the same lumber readily sells. The export trade, which should be very profitable, has as yet scarcely been inaugurated. Tan bark, dyewoods, valuable gums and rattans find a ready sale. It may reasonably be expected that the world's demand for forest products of all kinds will increase as the years go by, and that the resources of older countries will become depleted, or at least inadequate to supply steadily growing needs. Forest growth in the Philippines is rapid, and under suitable conservation methods reforestation comes about quickly. With continued enforcement of existing law, and with adequate supervision over cutting and reforestation, the cost of which should be paid by the lumber industry itself, the forests of the islands should become an important permanent source of revenue and wealth. Filipinos ought to become holders of forest concessions instead of labourers on the concessions of others. Whether any considerable number of them will care to do so remains to be seen, but at all events their forests should be conserved, so that the opportunity may be ever before them. At the present time caiñgin makers destroy far more timber in the course of a year than lumbermen use.