FOREST DEVASTATION 929 



nent on passenger train schedules, because enough big timber of the 

 kinds required could no longer be found in the East or South. Walnut 

 for rifle stocks and airplane propellers was so badly needed that shade 

 and park trees had to be sacrificed and barely filled the gap. Bat- 

 talions of men went into the eastern mountain forests to get out the 

 chestnut wood and the oak and hemlock bark used in the tanning of 

 leather for shoes and harness. Regiments were employed in getting 

 out spruce for airplane construction. The shortage of hickory han- 

 dles for trench, railroad, and mine tools ran into millions. Only by 

 extraordinary effort could enough rough lumber be assembled in time 

 to build cantonments and house the workers at the shipyards and 

 munitions plants. 



War involves not only lumber and wood in innumerable items, but 

 also all manner of forest by-products, such as acetone, chloroform, 

 iodoform, rosin, charcoal, fustics, pitch, balsam, turpentine, flotation 

 oils and methyl alcohol, tannic and acetic acids. Pulp and paper come 

 from the forest. Wood furnishes the cheapest supply of cellulose and 

 pyroligneous acid. 



So great was the drain of the war industries upon our depleted 

 forests that in many cases essential munitions materials are practically 

 gone. Today it would be very difficult and far more costly to dupli- 

 cate the supplies of walnut, ash, and spruce which the war consumed ; 

 within 15 years it will be impossible to assemble so quickly even the 

 amount of rough lumber used in emergency war construction, since 

 the bulk of it will have to be shipped from the West coast. This 

 would not be true had our forests been used but not abused, had the 

 great forest regions near to the center of population and industry not 

 been devastated. 



FOREST DEVASTATION AND THE CONSUMER OF FOREST PRODUCTS 



If the cut-over lands of the East, the Lake States, and the southern 

 pineries had been handled with foresight, the lands now idle in those 

 regions would be growing, each year, as much timber as was cut in 

 the year of their greatest lumber production, and that timber would 

 be available to the consumer at a lower price than he is now paying. 

 The difference is what the consumer pays for forest devastation. 



A considerable part of the present cost of lumber is the freight. The 

 devastation of the nearer forests and the consequent longer haul has 

 brought our annual freight bill, on lumber alone, to 175 million dollars. 

 Within 20 years the bulk of our lumber must come from the far West. 



