REPORT OF THE FORESTER. 



United States Department of Agriculture, 



Forest Service, 

 Washington, D. C, September 30, 1922. 



>\ii: I have the honor to transmit herewith a report of the work in 

 th(^ Forest Service for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1922. 



William B. Greeley, 



Forester. 

 Hon. Henry C. Wallace, 



Secretary of Agriculture. 



NATIONAL FORESTRY POLICY. 



Every year makes the forest problem of the United States more 

 clear. Its main features are: 



1. The rising cost of timber products due primarily to heavier 

 transportation charges from more and more distant sources of supply. 



2. The unproductive condition of immense areas of land which are 

 not adapted to agriculture. 



The cut of luinber is decreasing in all the Eastern States; in prac- 

 tically every State v/est of the Great Plains it is increasing. The 

 large sawmills of the country are in full migration westward to the 

 last great virgin timber supply on the Pacific coast. During the past 

 30 years the pineries of the South have been the mainstay of the 

 densely populated Central and Eastern States for the softwood lum- 

 ber used in building, in general construction, and in many manufac- 

 tures. Their cut is dwindling. Every year scores of sawmills are 

 dismantled. The rapid increase in lumber sliipments through the 

 Panama Canal foreshadows the time, in the near future, when the 

 principal source of softwood lumber for the entire Nation will have 

 shifted to the west coast and the average freight cost paid by the 

 home builder or manufacturer will have advanced to a new and 

 higher level. 



When the coniferous virgin timber of the far West is exhausted in 

 its turn, if the principal source of supply shifts to Siberia or South 

 America the transportation conditions which control the present lum- 

 ber market will become different only in degree. Further, as the 

 sources of supply become more restricted and more distant from the 



I)rincipal centers of consumption, opportunities for competition are 

 essened; and temporary shortages due to bad seasons, labor troubles, 

 or congestion of transportation facilities are more probable and more 

 severe. Thus the conditions of the trade become more favorable to 

 monopolistic control, to violent market fluctuations, and to liigh 

 prices. And we are dealing with a basic raw material, as widely used 

 and as necessary to national existence as coal. 



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