FOREST DEVASTATION 927 



useable timber to supply the Nation, for the time is too short and the 

 areas too small. 



3. By stopping the devastation of the virgin forests which yet 

 remain to be cut over. 



To prevent forest devastation is to make sure that there will always 

 be a forest on the land. If the mature timber is to be cut, and if a 

 forest is still to remain upon the land, there are two alternatives : 

 either to cut the original forest clean and restock the bare land with 

 young trees, naturally or by hand ; or to cut only the mature timber 

 without destroying the young and middle-aged trees which make up 

 fully 90 per cent of our virgin forests. These young and middle-aged 

 trees, already well advanced toward useful sizes, will become mer- 

 chantable many decades before mere seedlings can grow to be of any 

 "■crvice. 



If the gap between the exhaustion of our old-timber forests and 

 fhe maturing of our new-timber forests is to be bridged, it must be 

 done by keeping alive enormous numbers of trees, now of young and 

 middle age, so that they may reach maturity and supply the lumber 

 v;e shall need in 50 to 100 years. There is no way of doing this 

 save by preventing the destruction of trees of the requisite ages and 

 sizes that are now^ alive. These trees exist in our virgin forests. To 

 continue destroying them will precipitate a timber famine ; to save 

 them offers the only chance of preventing one. 



To conduct logging operations without forest devastation will usually 

 (but not always) add to the cost of lumbering. The increased expense 

 will, in certain instances, be material, in others only nominal. What- 

 ever the costs, they will be insignificant compared with the prices 

 which the consumer of forest products must already pay, and they will 

 be altogether trifling compared with the prices which will have to be 

 paid if forest devastation continues. In 1909 the average price of 

 newsprint paper was $2.25 per hundred pounds; in 1919 it is $4.50. 

 In 1909 the average mill price of lumber was $19.50 per thousand feet; 

 in 1919 it is in the neighborhood of $11.00. 



Fully stocked and well managed forests produce timber at the rate 

 of not over 300 feet board measure per acre per year. It is not likely 

 that we could, under any circumstances, get the whole of our forest 

 area up to such a rate of production in less than a century. Moreover, 

 within a few decades the present total of our forest lands will be 

 reduced by the passing of many millions of acres into agricultural and 

 other uses. This reduction of acreage will be more or less offset by 



