232 ANNUAL REPORTS OF DEPARTMENT OF AORTCULTURE. 



going east, west, and south, to rise again in the countless homes of 

 an expanding nation. From open prairie to seaboard cities, from 

 the factory towns and hamlets of New England to the growing 

 commercial centers and the multiplying crossroad villages of the 

 JMiddle AYest, they fed prosperity, and fireswept desolation blotted 

 the land of their origin. 



Thus was created a problem which is now not nation wide, but 

 world-wide. New York bids against South America and the Orient 

 for the timber of the Pacific Northwest. Southern pine goes by 

 water from the Gulf to Great Britain or the North Atlantic States; 

 by rail, to meet the output of Montana's forests on the plains. In 

 1911 the United States exported domestic forest products to a total 

 value of over $100,000,000, of which Europe took over $55,000,000 

 worth and South America about $25,000,000 worth. All the coun- 

 tries of eastern Europe must import timber to meet the excess of 

 their needs over the home supply. Meanwhile, with an estimated 

 home consumption of 23 billion cubic feet of wood annually, our 

 depleted and abused forests are producing by growth probably less 

 than 7 billion feet. The Bureau of Corporations of the Department 

 of Commerce and Labor estimates the existing supply of saw timber 

 in the United States at less than 3,000 billion board feet, which is 

 equivalent to about 500 billion cubic feet. Economists now recognize 

 that, taking the world over, wood consumption exceeds its growth, 

 and that a crisis approaches. 



That some measure of public provision has been made for main- 

 tained supplies of a great public necessity; that we are not merely 

 16 years nearer the time when wood shortage will handicap building, 

 mining, and manufacturing, the railroad, the merchant, the farmer, 

 the wage earner, and the consumer; that one-fifth of the standing 

 timber in the United States is not only held and protected in national 

 forests, but also open to use under methods which will mean in- 

 creasing production through growth and successive harvests for all 

 time ; that the public is fully awake to the importance of preventing 

 forest fires everywhere, and of substituting forest management for 

 forest exploitation; that private owners recognize in forestry not an 

 impracticable counsel of perfection and a fad of theorists but a 

 tangible business proposal ; that lumbermen show^ a growling realiza- 

 tion of the fact that their industry is one affected with a public 

 interest, and therefore involving a public responsibility ; that immense 

 gains have been made in reduction of waste and increased length and 

 amount of service obtainable from what is cut; that conservation of 

 natural resources has become an accepted public policy and a clearly 

 perceived matter of national welfare — all these are results primarily 

 and directly due to the work of this department within the last 16 

 years. 



