THE RELATION OF GEOGRAPHY TO TIMBER SUPPLY 



By W. B. Greelky 

 Chief, United States Forest Service 



[With 3 plates] 



Even since Hiram, King of Tyre, shipped rafts of fir and cedar 

 down the Mediterranean coast to trade with the Jews of Solomon's 

 day, timber has been an important factor in the commerce of the 

 nations. Among the first exports from the American colonies to 

 the mother country were clapboards split from the oak of Virginia, 

 ship masts cut from the pine forests of New England, and pitch 

 extracted from the piney woods of the South Atlantic. The prog- 

 ress of civilization has been called a struggle between human wants 

 and natural resources. And no part of this age-long contest has 

 been more clear cut than the effort of mankind to supply its need 

 for wood. 



Most of the industrially aggressive nations have lived in forested 

 regions, and most of them have been liberal users of timber. The 

 course of these nations in satisfying their requirements for forest- 

 grown materials has usually run through three different stages. At 

 first they have cut freely from their own virgin forests as long as 

 the supply lasted. Then they have cast about for what they might 

 barter from their neighbors. And finally they have settled down to 

 the systematic growing of wood on all the land that could be spared 

 for the purpose, still finding it necessary or convenient in many 

 cases to import a substantial part of their national requirements 

 from other countries whose virgin forests have not yet become 

 depleted or whose timber culture produces an exportable surplus. 



Man-grown timber, however, is costly, while timber stored up in 

 nature's undrained warehouses is cheap. The source of supply is 

 thus largely governed by the cost of growing timber at home as com- 

 pared with the cost of hauling it from the nearest virgin forests still 

 available for exploitation. In the long run, forestry is pitted 

 against transportation. 



^ Reprinted by permission from Economic Geograpliy, vol. 1, No. 1, March, 1925. 

 76041—26 35 533 



