3io POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE OP FORESTRY. 



By OVERTON W. PRICE, 



BUREAU OF FORESTRY. 



EXPERIMENT has already demonstrated the value of practical 

 forestry as a sound business measure. The general applica- 

 tion of conservative methods in the handling of public and private 

 forest lands in this country is no longer a remote possibility. Ten 

 years ago, the prevailing attitude towards forestry was one skeptical 

 of its practical advantages. To-day the lumbermen, at one time 

 the strongest opponents of the movement towards conservative forest 

 management, are its staunchest advocates. 



Although the application of practical forestry already exerts 

 marked local influence, it is not yet sufficiently extended to form 

 an important factor in our national economy. The time is not far 

 distant, however, when its more general adoption will be felt in all 

 industries dependent upon the forest. Forestry alone can perpetuate 

 lumbering, and the fullest development of the mining industry rests 

 largely upon it. Irrigation, and therefore agriculture upon irrigated 

 lands, can be permanent only through forest preservation. 



Mr. Henry Gannett gives the value of the products of the lumber 

 industry for 1900 as about $567,000,000, and $611,000,000 as the 

 invested capital. There were employed, exclusive of those working in 

 dependent logging camps, about 400,000 persons, who received during 

 the year a total of $140,000,000 in wages. Estimating conservatively, 

 the lumber industry gave support in 1900 to 2,000,000 persons, while 

 the number engaged in dependent trades, to whom it indirectly afforded 

 a means of livelihood, was many times greater. 



The geographical movement of the lumber industry is significant 

 of a rapidly waning supply of merchantable timber. Fifty years ago, 

 the northeastern states contributed more than one half the total 

 lumber product of the country. They now furnish less than one sixth. 

 In 1880 the Lake states produced one third of the supply, which has 

 already sunk to about one fourth. In the southern and Pacific states, 

 on the other hand, there has been a steady increase in production. 

 These facts show that in the two geographical divisions nearest to the 

 great centers of population, the available supply of timber is rapidly 

 nearing exhaustion. The southern and the Pacific states, therefore, 

 already yielding nearly forty per cent, of the total lumber product, will 

 soon become the chief sources of supply. 



