ARBORICULTURE. 



131 



A Premium on National Suicide. 



The National Hardwood Lumber As- 

 sociation, recently in session in Memphis, 

 Tenn., accepted the committee report that, 

 from the best estimates possible to be had, 

 "there now stood in the United States 

 approximately 1,475,000,000,000 feet of 

 lumber, but that 45,000,000,000 feet were 

 being cut every year." 



At this rate our forests would last 

 nearly thirty-three years, at which time 

 the production of commercial lumber 

 must cease altogether. 



But there are several other contingen- 

 cies which must be considered in such 

 calculations. The annual fires in forests 

 destroy an incredible quantity of standing 

 timber, including all the younger growths 

 which have started and the seed as well, 

 and seed trees from which future forests 

 must be produced. 



Including the consumption of wood for 

 pulp and paper, lumber cut for export 

 and for domestic use, telegraph poles, 

 cross-ties, piling, and fuel, of which much 

 is still used in many locations, the timbers 

 used in mining operations and that de- 

 stroyed by forest fires, there are seventy- 

 five billions feet of timber consumed each 

 year, with an increased quantity yearly. 

 It is evident, therefore, that we h^ve nnt 

 enough timber standing to continue com- 

 mercially for more than twenty years in 

 all the United States, including the Pacific 

 Coast forests. 



In estimating American forest areas, 

 a Washington City publication recently 

 made ridiculous claims by States, tending 

 to prove that ovir forest possessions were 

 so great as to be inexhaustible. In this 

 estimate millions of acres w^ere included 

 which are brush lands, from which all 

 commercial timber has been removed, and 



farms which have been cleared for fortv 

 or fifty years. 



There are, in the Allegheny and Blue 

 Ridge Mountains, and other rough locali- 

 ties, large areas, which are to some extent 

 covered with scrubby growths, but which 

 will not mature for more than a century. 



Other localities have swamps, in which 

 an inferior timber growth remains, giving 

 the appearance of a forest, yet the com- 

 mercially valuable trees have been re- 

 moved. 



LTnd^ the best conditions there must 

 be a long interval of seventy-five or more 

 years from the year A. D. 1925, when the 

 bulk of our trees will have been con- 

 sumed, and the beginning of the twenty- 

 first century, when, if protected, these 

 brush lands may become matured tim- 

 ber, during which long period the United 

 States will be destitute of native lumber. 



It is none too soon, therefore, "that 

 something should be done, and done im- 

 mediately." 



We have urged repeatedly in Arbori- 

 culture that quickly maturing trees be 

 planted in immense quantities to forestall 

 the coming timber famine, and we now 

 emphasize these statements, and again 

 urge government, States, lumbering com- 

 panies, land corporations, and above all 

 the farmers, to plant trees as extensively 

 as possible and without delay. 



So long as Congress insists upon 

 placing a high premium upon national 

 suicide by retaining the prohibitory duty 

 on lumber, the only remedy lies in the 

 planting of hundreds of millions of trees, 

 of such species as will grow in the brief- 

 est possible time, and which possess the 

 qualification demanded for lumber, cross- 

 ties, and all commercial purposes. 



