FOREST DKVASIATION 917 



TIMBER SUPPLIES ARE .DECREASING — PRICES WILL CONTINUE TO INCREASE 



In spite of the continuous exhaustion of local forests and the in- 

 creasing distance of our remaining timber supplies, the consumer is 

 still able to secure supplies of the more essential forest products. He 

 can do so, however, only at a rising cost, with a falling quality, and 

 with the substitution of other materials for wood. The rising cost is 

 due to freight charges for longer hauls, to the operations of middlemen, 

 and to interest charges upon the capital now necessarily invested in the 

 vast business of manufacturing and moving lumber and other forest 

 products from ever receding sources to ever more distant markets. 

 Supplies are decreasing with dangerous rapidity. Prices now are high, 

 and there is every indication that they may still go higher. 



Current supplies and prices are temporary only. At our present rate 

 of consumption, the present stand of mature timber, amounting to 

 2,500 billion feet, would be exhausted within 50 years, which is no 

 long time in the life of a nation. A greatly increased export trade, 

 which now seems probable, would materially reduce this period. Utter 

 exhaustion of this stand is not to be expected. But a degree of short- 

 age amounting to famine will come long before the forest is entirely 

 gone. 



A bread famine begins while there ard still large amounts of grain in 

 storage. In its early stages, it is largely due to unequal distribution of 

 the supplies still available. As the shortage becomes known, prices 

 tend to soar and profiteering follows. As the shortage spreads, much 

 of the population may be suffering long before actual starvation begins 

 and long before all the grain is gone. Utter exhaustion of the grain 

 supplies of a nation is practically impossible, but nation-wide famines 

 are well known. 



A shortage in timber may be expected to follow the lines of other 

 famines. But there is this essential difference between a shortage in 

 timber and a shortage in grain^grain can be sown, grown, and har- 

 vested in a summer, so that a shortage in wheat can be made good 

 within twelve months. Forests also must be sown, grown, and har- 

 vested before they can be used, but the time required to grow a timber 

 crop is not less than 50 years and normally exceeds a century. 



Since our present stand of mature forest is good for but 50 years 

 or less, and since new forests cannot by any chance reach log ^ize in 

 less than that time, it is certain that only the most immediate and 

 effective action can in any measure bridge the gap between the exhaus- 

 tion of the old forest and the growth of new supplies. 



