196 ANNUAL EEPORTS OF DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



The accessible timber of the world is inadequate to the requirements 

 of modern civilization. We now draw one-third of our paper from 

 Canada. The northeastern paper mills have already been seriously 

 handicapped by the embargo against the export of ])ulpwood cut on 

 crown lands, which form a large part of the Canadian forests. There 

 is likelihood that this embargo will be extended to all forest lands in 

 the Dominion, completely shutting off raw wood from Canada as a 

 source of supply for the paper industry of the United States. Tliis 

 illustrates the hazard of becoming dependent upon foreign supplies of 

 timber. 



The problem of unproductive land left in the wake of the sawmills 

 or abandoned by the farmer has assumed enormous proportions. 

 Our merchantable timber is being cut at the rate of four or five 

 million acres annually, and enormous areas of logged-off land have 

 accumulated which are not fit for cultivation but on which little or 

 no new timber is being grown. The extent to which these millions 

 of acres of idle land have been swelled by the ebbing tide of cultiva- 

 tion in many States is not generally realized. Between the census 

 years of 1910 and 1920 the total area of improved farm land increased 6 

 per cent, due to agricultural expansion in the South and West and to 

 the stimulus of war-time demands for crop production; but in 18 of 

 the Eastern and East Central States the improved farm land shrank 

 at the rate of 800,000 acres a year. New England lost 32,000 farms, 

 with a net decrease during the 10 years of over a million acres of 

 improved land. There can be no question as to the steady contract- 

 ing of cultivation in a considerable number of the oldest and most 

 populous States and the consequent lapse of large areas of land into 

 partial or complete idleness. What to do with unused and unpro- 

 ductive land is one of the most fundamental economic and social 

 problems of the United States. 



Including burned and cut-over areas and abandoned fields which 

 once grew timber, one-third of the soil of the Union is forest land. 

 And tlu'ee-fourths of it lies in the Mississippi Valley and eastward to 

 the Atlantic coast, in the very States having the densest population 

 and the largest consumption of timber products. Over 40 per cent 

 of New York and Pennsylvania is forest land. Seventy-five per cent 

 of Maine and of New Hampshire is forest land. From 45 to 70 per 

 cent of the area of each of the South Atlantic and Gulf States is 

 forest land. The use of these vast areas of nontillable land for grow- 

 ing successive crops of timber would kill two birds with one stone. 

 It would insure ultimately a supply of forest products adequate for 

 all national requirements: and it would go far toward maintaining a 

 virile rural population and stable rural communities in the regions of 

 inferior soil and limited agriculture. 



The working out of a vast economic problem of this character will 

 necessarily require a long time and can be only partially accomplished 

 or influenced by public action. Steady progress is being made from 

 year to year in the protection of forest lands from fire, particularly 

 through increased State and Federal appropriations, the encourage- 

 ment given to private protective efi'ort by public cooperation, and 

 the enactment of better State laws for reducing the hazard caused 

 by logging debris. Nation-wide fire protection was given a strong 

 impetus during the past year by a threefold increase in the appropria- 

 tion for Federal cooperation with the States in protecting the forested 



