INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY 
Forest wealth is essential to our national welfare. Increasing 
population, new uses, and accelerated processes of present-day 
ndustry will continue to demand enormous quantities of forest 
oroducts. Forest utilization, conversion of forests into commercial 
products, comprise a large group of industries important in na- 
tional and community life. In some states forest industries rank 
next to agriculture in importance. In the Nation our forest indus- 
ries rank fifth among all industries in value of products. 
The United States consumes annually more than a third of 
all the. wood used in the world. It has the largest per capita 
consumption of all industrial nations. Low per capita consumption 
in other countries does not show a waning popularity for wood or 
a preference for substitutes—for all countries use wood in propor- 
tion to its abundance or scarcity. The Nation should not plan on 
‘future reduction in total volume of wood consumed, but should plan 
on maximum wood production on its forest areas. 
Forestry to be feasible must be profitable; to be profitable 
forests must be freely but properly used. 
We consume each year more timber than we grow; the deficit 
.s drawn from virgin timber, our forest capital. which we annually 
reduce 214 per cent. 
Forests are dynamic, fortunately. They grow. Fundamen- 
tally forest wealth is in the ground—in its power to produce suc- 
cessive crops of trees. Complete utilization of this dynamic char- 
acter of the forest will supply permanently our requirements. and 
will keep our forest capital intact. 
We still have nearly 40 per cent of our original timber. 
Besides this reserve there are 249 million acres of second-growth 
timber in varying stages of maturity. 
"The problem is how best to get every acre of forest land pro- 
ducing the maximum product at the earliest possible date. 
Since over 80 per cent of our forest land is privately owned, it 
's obvious that we must give most attention to private enterprise 
rather than rely upon the government. 
“Commercial Forestry” is the term applied to the business of 
growing crops of trees by private enterprise. Hand planting is so 
expensive as to be practicable only in certain regions, and the great 
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