DR. COMPTON S FOURTEEN POINTS 953 



year, the net annual increment of saw material is not more than 7 

 billion feet instead of the 20 billion feet guessed by Dr. Compton. 

 We are therefore cutting saw timber five times as fast as we grow it. 

 Comparing the total stand of timber of sawlog size, a little less than 

 2,500 billion board feet, with the total annual cut of all material of 

 this size, 60 billion board feet, there would seem to be in sight a 

 supply of timber that would last only between 50 and 60 years, instead 

 of the 150 years predicted by Dr. Compton. The prospect therefore 

 is that in from 60 to 75 years our requirements for lumber will be 

 about the same as now while the reserve supply of merchantable ma- 

 terial will be entirely exhausted and the amount supplied by growth 

 will furnish only from one-fifth to one-third of these requirements. 

 Dr. Compton's statement that a lessened demand for lumber has 

 characterized the industrial development of other countries, such as 

 Germany and Great Britain, is, unfortunately for his argument, quite 

 the reverse of the actual facts. In spite of the fact that production 

 from Germany's forests has doubled in volume within the past cen- 

 tury, her imports of lumber from other countries have steadily in- 

 creased in amount. In Great Britain not only has the total consump- 

 tion of lumber increased five-fold during the period 1851-1911, but 

 even the per capita consumption has steadily increased, and in 1911 

 was more than tJiree times what it was GO years before.^ Against Dr. 

 Compton's assertion, based apparently on opinion or "conversations" 

 M^ith some one who was ignorant of the facts, we may set this state- 

 ment of the Forestry Branch of the British Government, which is 

 backed up by actual figures: "There are factors — such as the pre- 

 servative treatment of wood and the substitution- of other materials 

 for constructional purposes — which may tend to check the consump- 

 tion of timber, but it is a feature of modern commercial progress that 

 in spite of this the consumption per capita is steadly increasing." The 

 economic pressure for increasing quantities of wood has forced prac- 

 tically every European country, even densely populated industrial 

 nations like Belgium, to ncrease the areas under forest and to adopt 

 more and more intensive methods of forestry in order to stimulate 

 production of timber. 



'Joint Annual Report of the Forestry Branches, 1912-13. London, 1914. 

 Per capita consumption of imported timber in United Kingdom. 



