NEED OF A FOREST LAW IN SOUTH CAROLINA 



229 



tion, on the other hand, will mean that 

 when the present crop of merchantable 

 timber is removed there will be another 

 to take its place. 



"As a restilt of forest fires and conse- 

 quent deterioration of the soil and 

 elimination of the more valuable tree 

 species, South Carolina today contains 

 vast areas of unproductive waste land, 

 or else land on which such valuable 

 trees as white oak and yellow poplar 

 have been supplanted by the black 

 oaks and other inferior species. 



"The blight of fire on the watersheds, 

 which bares the slopes so that there is 

 no impediment to run-off, is invariably 

 reflected in the greater likelihood of 

 floods and of low water. Very few 

 States have as much at stake in the 

 maintenance of an eqtdtable streamflow 

 as has South Carolina. Memory of the 

 disastrous floods of 1903 is still fresh in 

 your minds. So important does the 

 Federal Government consider the rela- 

 tion of forest fires to strcmflow that 

 Congress enacted the so-railed "Weeks 

 Law," which appropriated $200,000 for 

 cooperative work wi^ li the various 

 States in protecting forests on the 

 watersheds of navigable streams. It 

 also appropriated $8,000,000 for the 

 purchase of forested lands which are 

 important in maintaining the navigabil- 

 ity of water courses, and in purchasing 

 such lands the Government pays a 

 higher price for those which have not 

 been badly burned than for tracts which 

 have imdergone the ravages of fire. 



"If an example were sought of results 

 which follow excessive destruction of 

 timber and wasteful methods of hand- 

 ling it, it would be hard to find a better 

 one than that presented by the history 

 of th>5 naval stores industry in South 

 Carolma. From a sum reported to be 

 nearly $2,000,000 in 1879, the value of 

 the naval stores products in South 

 Carohna decreased to $400,000 in 1909. 

 The industry declined as the supply of 

 longleaf pine steadily became scarcer. 

 It can be rehabilitated only by pro- 

 tecting the remaining longleaf pine 

 from fire and adopting proper methods 

 of management. Starting in North 

 Carolina, th • industry moved to South 

 Carolina, which at one time marked 



the center of production. With the 

 depletion of the timber resources in 

 these two States, it moved again to 

 Georgia, and is now concentrated in 

 the pineries of Florida. Yet the perma- 

 nency of the naval stores industry, 

 which means so much to the prosperity 

 of the Southern States and to the 

 country at large, could have been 

 maintained by the exercise of fore- 

 thought and a little effort, especially on 

 the part of the State. 



"France is one of the largest producers 

 of naval stores, and this resiilt has been 

 brought about not through a gift of 

 Nature, but by the efforts of the 

 French people. Something over a mil- 

 lion acres of shifting sands have been 

 transformed by the French Forest 

 Service into a flourishing forest region 

 which supplies all the naval stores of 

 that country. In our own country the 

 United States Forest Service is now ex- 

 perimenting on its National Forest in 

 Florida with the maritime pine of 

 France, which resembles our loblolly 

 in rapidity of growth, and yields tur- 

 pentine equal in quality to that from 

 the fast disappearing longleaf. The 

 experiments promise to go a long way 

 toward solving the problem of reforest- 

 ing our depleted Southern pineries, and 

 I mention this instance and that of 

 France merely to show that by taking 

 th nece sary measures it may be 

 possible to renew and keep the naval 

 stores industry in the Southern States, 

 where it originated. 



"South Carolina has a productive for- 

 est area of about 10,000,000 acres. On 

 this area as a whole it is safe to say that 

 the average annual production per acre 

 does not amount to more than 75 board 

 feet of log material. This means that 

 the total annual growth of the forest 

 of the State is something like 750,000,000 

 board feet of timber. The annual cut, 

 on the other hand, is estimated at one 

 biUion board feet, which exceeds the 

 annual growth by 250,000,000 feet. To 

 put the fact in another way, one-third 

 more timber is each year being taken 

 from the forests of South Carolina than 

 is being produced. And this does not 

 take into consideration the large amount 

 of material used for domestic purposes 



