540 



ANNUAL EEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1925 



has remained largely concentrated in the northeastern States. As a 

 consequence the raw material available on American soil has been 

 wholly imable to sustain our increasing consumption oi' paper. Of 

 the 8,000,000 tons used in the United States in 1922, 53 per cent came 

 from foreign countries in the form of pulpwood, manufactured pulp, 

 or finished paper. Thirty-seven per cent was imported from Canada 

 alone, including over 1,000,000 cords of raw pulp wood. The cost 

 of the pulp wood delivered at American plants, much of which is 

 now hauled excessive distances, has probably increased even more 

 rapidly than the price of lumber. In satisfying its needs for this im- 

 portant forest product, therefore, the United States has already out- 

 stripped the resources of her own virgin forests. Slie has been driven 

 to the paper and pulp-wood markets of the world. 



PAPER AND PULP MILLS OF THE UNITED STATES. I 



PAPER MILLS 



WOOOPULP AND PAPE.R MILLS 



FiBtR PULP ANO PAPCR MILLS 



The stern facts of geography have largely controlled these past 

 developments in our forest industries and in the cost of their wares 

 to the American consumer. The true measure of timber supply is 

 not quantity but availability. Sixty per cent of all the wood that 

 is left in the United States and 75 per cent of its virgin timber lie 

 west of the Great Plains, whereas two-thirds of the population and 

 an even larger proportion of our agriculture and manufactures are 

 east of the Great Plains. The forests bordering the Pacific coast 

 contain over a trillion feet of virgin stumpage. At the most, they 

 w^ill not supply our present consumption very long, but already the 

 unbalanced geographical distribution of this resource is creating 

 well-nigh famine prices in the parts of the United States where 

 forest products are used in the largest quantities. Dependence upon 



