National Conference on Forest Products 3 
is no reason to expect a decline in the $250,000,000 which could better be 
rate of cutting as long as the forests used for growing timber than for 
last. transporting it. 
What has given us this illusion of There is no easy road out of this 
permanency? First, our stored tim- unprofitable situation. The end of 
ber which could be drawn on with free timber is in sight. World com- 
increasing speed and with the ap- petition for the world supply will 
pearance of plenty until the last stick leave no large dependable source of 
of it should be gone. Secondly, a imports open to us. The use of sub- 
transportation system that has per- stitutes hardly keeps pace with new 
mitted our sawmills to follow the re- uses for wood; there is no likelihood 
treating forests and to ship their that we can become a woodless nation 
product to distant buyers. Our mar- even if we wanted to. When the free 
kets have been full of timber. Only timber is gone we must grow our wood 
in the higher cost, the long haul, the from the soil like any other crop. 
near exhaustion of certain kinds of Strange as it may seem, the Amer- 
wood, and the sharply falling per ican people, bred for many generations 
capita consumption have we dimly to forest life, drawing no small meas- 
sensed the dwindling of our forests. ure of their wealth from the forest, 
We do not know the forest situa- have not yet acquired the sense of 
tion down to the last acre and board timber as a crop. These immense 
foot, but we know it well enough to stretches of cut-over land, mostly too 
make us think and act. Of the old rough or .too sterile for tilling, have 
forest the first explorers met we have not awakened us to their vast poten- 
in area only one-sixth left, and in bulk tial worth as growers of wood. Fully 
of timber less than one-third. From one-fourth of our land area ought to 
overcutting and fire we have left on be kept in forest—mot poor, dwindling 
our hands something like 80 million thickets of serub, but forests of trees 
acres of denuded forest land, most of fit for bridges and houses and ships. 
it unfit for farming. Then we have Handled by the best timber-cropping 
about 250 million acres of second- methods, our present forest lands 
growth forest, much of it poor in qual- could be made to grow even more tim- 
ity and amount. Three-fourths of our ber each year than we now use. But 
cut is still from virgin forests, difi- much of our cut-over land, lying idle 
cult and distant of access, so that their or half productive, is now an im- 
products must pay for long freight measurable loss. It pays little or no 
hauls to reach the chief markets. taxes; it keeps few hands busy; it 
Expressed roughly, we have left turns few wheels; it builds no roads. 
about 745 billion cubic feet of timber. Idle forest and has scrapped schools, 
From this the annual drain is 25 bil- factories, railroads, and towns; it has 
lion cubie feet. This total drain is dotted the land with abandoned farms ; 
most significant when we reflect that, it has created a migratory population. 
toward offsetting it, we have an an- Our forest problem is a land problem 
nual timber growth of only 6 billion of the first magnitude. 
cubic feet; and even in our young It is likewise an industrial problem 
forests, where this growth is taking of great importance. These great in- 
place, cutting has already outstripped dustries that depend on the forest for 
growth. We must face the situation their raw material—industries that, 
that at this rgte we are not far from taken together, rank about third in 
timber exhaustion. value of output among our chief in- 
To bridge this fatal gap between cut dustrial groups—must be preserved. 
and growth we have never taken suffi- They employ a very large number of 
cient action. In fact, our wealth of wage earners; they represent an im- 
old-growth timber has made us prone mense investment of capital; around 
to ignore the gap and to leave our less them are built whole cities; they feed 
fortunate descendants to struggle with the railroads with a vast flow of 
it. But we can not escape the penal- traffic. In the long run they depend 
ties of our national neglect. They are for their existence on making our 
already beginning to be felt. Since forest soils grow timber and on using 
1870 lumber prices have risen much that timber without waste. 
more rapidly than the prices of other This brief sketch of the forest prob- 
commodities. Per capita annual con- lem would be incomplete if it did 
sumption of sawed lumber, which in not mention the hopeful progress 
1906 had reached 525 board feet, has already made toward a better forest 
dropped to 285 and in some of the policy. Of our total forest area of 
Bastern States to 160 board feet. We 470 million acres, about one-fifth is 
are paying a yearly freight bill of in public ownership. Most. of these