No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 467 



people talk forestry? Surely our government and our industrial life 

 will be tested as never before when we reach the end of our great 

 natural resources. 



DISAPPEARANCE OF FORESTS DUE LARGELY TO WASTE. 



The chief regret and shame to us as a nation and as states will 

 be that we brought this timber famine upon us not so much by 

 what we actually used, but by what we have wasted during the 

 process of utilization, and have allowed to waste by forest fires. 

 In 1907 the largest cut of any one species was the yellow pine of 

 the South. Mr. Long, of the Loug-liell Lumber Co., estimated that 

 in that year over 20 per cent, of the yellow pine trees were left in 

 the woods at time of logging. The amount so left is equal annu- 

 ally to a good stand of timber on over 300,000 acres. As the logs 

 come from the forest there is waste at the mill, in the planing mill 

 and finally too much waste in the use of the lumber for construction 

 and other purposes. Such waste is the rule rather than the excep- 

 tion, and similar figures could be given for species other than the 

 yellow pine. 



FIRE THE GREATEST ENEMY OF FORESTS. 



The most shameful thing is that the greatest waste which has 

 been going on in our forests has been the result of ever re-occurring 

 fires, and our people have been so busy taking care of their own 

 little selves that they have been and are standing helplessly by and 

 letting these fires continue. It was estimated that during the past 

 fall months when fires were burning throughout the country that 

 standing timber to the value of one million dollars was destroyed 

 each day. During these "fiery'' months just past there was fortu- 

 nately comparatively little loss of human life or destruction of per- 

 sonal property, but every now and then in this country we have 

 such terrible fires as that which occurred at Hinkley, Minnesota, in 

 the early 90s, when 500 lives were destroyed and over twenty-five 

 million dollars worth of property went up in smoke. Not a fire oc- 

 curred last fall which with reasonable expenditure of funds could 

 not have been prevented. In Germany and other European coun- 

 tries to-day fire is one of the least of the enemies of the forest. 

 There preventive ineasures have been made so effective that fire is 

 actually not a serious problem. The U. S. Forest Service estimates 

 that three to four million dollars properly expended in the forest 

 regions of this country annually would make it impossible to have 

 any very serious fires, and yet last fall a million dollars a day was 

 being destroyed, and the probable total destruction for the fall 

 months would be between eighty to one hundred million dollars. 

 Last year on the national forests, which aggregate 168.000,000 acres 

 in extent, the Forest Service at an expenditure of $30,000 to |40,000 

 kept all first from 99 per cent, of the total area, showing what we 

 can do easily' in any forest region of this country at a comparatively 

 small expense. The value of timber lost by fire in Pennsylvania last 

 fall alone is such that if the State could have in money what was 

 burned up, it is safe to say that all forest lands of the land could be 

 protected from fire for a period of tan years, and the present area 

 of the State reserves incrt^nsi^d tn a million and a half acres. The 

 State Forestry Commission of Pennsylvania is doing a splendid work 



