106 



AMKRICAX I'URKSTRY 



1907, however, the effects of overproduction have been felt, 

 and the jsrices of common structural woods have made 

 no sustained increase. 



The American public, the Forest Service points out, 

 has no responsibility to protect the security of timber in- 

 vestments or the outcome of speculative ventures. The 

 welfare of many sections, however, depends in no small 

 degree upon lumbering as a large tax payer, a gigantic em- 

 ployer of labor and capital, and the chief consumer of 

 agriculture and other industries. The people of the whole 

 countrj', furthermore, have a live interest in the economical 

 use of present timber supplies and in continued forest 

 production after logging. 



THE report lays special emphasis upon the fact that 

 such waste in the use of our natural forest wealth 

 as is now taking place will tell inevitably in the future 

 cost of lumber, paper, and other products manufactured 

 from timber, as it has told already in many "cut out" 

 states. Furthermore, under present conditions, little is 

 being done to restock the forest lands logged for their 

 virgin timber. The total use of wood in the United States 

 exceeds by a good deal the aggregate growth of its forests; 

 and unless the enormous areas of cuto\-cr land, to which 

 millions of acres are added every year, are put to grow- 

 ing new forests, the Forest Service thinks that the danger 

 of a nation-wide shortage of timber and high prices for 

 all wood products will become acute. The unstable 

 condition of the lumber industry, the re])ort says, 

 makes it imable to do much toward renewal of the forests 

 which it has destroyed. 



The experts in the Forest Service believe that a more 

 stable kind of forest ownership, di\-orccd from manufac- 

 ture to a larger degree than now, must come about before 

 the ills of the lumber business can be cured pennanently. 

 This kind of ownership must not c^nh- carry the present 

 stocks of merchantable timber until the productive in- 

 dustry needs them, but also provide for regrowth on 

 cutover lands. The extension of public forest ownership, 

 both state and national, should, in the judgment of the 

 Service, have a large part in this accomplishment. 



According to the Service experts, there is no surplus 

 of forest resources above the country's needs. There is 

 rather a lack of forests, particularly of growing forests to 

 take the place of the reservoirs of virgin timber now being 

 drained. The difficulty lies, says the Service, in the wrong 

 kind of forest ownership. 



A NATIONAL mistake, the report goes on to say, was 

 made in such rapid and wholesale passing of title to 

 timberlands in the public domain, beyond all im- 

 mediate needs for local or industrial development. Private 

 ownership, hard pressed to carry these staggering quanti- 

 ties of timber during the long periods which must neces- 

 sarily elaj^se before they can be converted into lumber, is 

 now sacrificing them in part by wasteful use because of 

 its own financial exigencies. The carrying of this future 

 resource, the Forest Service declares, should have been a 

 public rather than a private function. The report urges 



that this situation be faced frankly and the obvious remedy 

 applied, that of taking part of the westei n timberlands back. 

 Much can be accomplished also, the report says, by 

 public and private cooperation in fire protection and 

 in .securing methods of taxation better adapted to tim- 

 berlands; and, to insure the regrowth of logged-oflf for- 

 ests, reasonable public regulation of the handling of 

 private lands will unquestionably find a place in working 

 out the problem. 



FINALLY, the Forest Service disagrees radically with 

 the idea now rooted in many quarters that forest 

 conservation should be sought through pemiitting 

 industiial combinations for the regulation of lumber pro- 

 duction or control of Itimber prices. It regards such devel- 

 opments as involving dangers to the public interests 

 through restraint of trade so serious as to offset any pos- 

 sible advantages to the public from such forms of conseiva- 

 tion as they might foster. The Service believes, in fact, 

 that such measures as joint control of lumber output by 

 agreement would be ineffective m holding back the pres- 

 sure to cut timber and in overcoming the other weaknesses 

 which cause overproduction. BetteiTnent in the industry, 

 the Service holds, must come largely through strength- 

 ening individual operators or owners, and particularly 

 through a more stable ownership of forest lands, in which 

 the public participates to a much larger degree than now. 

 The Forest Service advocates such foims of coopera- 

 tion as trade associations and selling agencies, safeguarded 

 by public supervision and regulation. But changes in the 

 competitive status of the industry, like joint control of 

 production of price, can, in the view of the Service, come 

 about only with an entirely different national conception 

 of the country's basic resources. The adjustment of pub- 

 lic and private interests in a national policy which seeks 

 the wisest use of forest resources and controls the indus- 

 tries which exploit them may then become possible, in- 

 cluding the principle of regulating output. But in any 

 developments of this nature, the public should have a 

 direct and a ruling voice. 



PURCHASE OF FOREST LANDS 



THE acreage acquired b}- the Government under the 

 Weeks forestry law during the fiscal year 1916, 

 was more than double that acquired during the 

 preceding year, and in excess of the total acquired under 

 the Act from the date of its enactment in 1911 to the end 

 of the fiscal year, 1915, according to the annual report 

 of the Solicitor of the United States Department of Agri- 

 culture. These purchases were in Georgia, Maine, New 

 Hampshire, North and South Carolina. Tennessee, Vir- 

 ginia and West Virginia. 



OAK is the most suitable wood for carving, on 

 account of its durability and toughness, without 

 being too hard. Chestnut, American walnut, 

 mahogany and teak are also desirable, while for fine 

 work Italian walnut, lime, sycamore, apple, pear or plum 

 are generally chosen. 



