954 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



Population Loads of timber 



Year (millions) (per capita) 



1851 27.7 .07— 



1861 29.3 .09+ 



1871 31.8 .13+ 



1881 : 35.2 .17— 



1891 38.1 .17+ 



1901 42.0 .21— 



1911 45.4 .21+ 



Between 95 and 100 per cent of all lumber used in United Kingdom is im- 

 ported material, so that consumption of home-grown lumber will not materially 

 aflfect these figures. 



6. "Not only is it not necessarily, but if is not even probably true, 

 that all the lands in the United States locally determined to be better 

 suited for grozving trees than for grozving anything else, should be 

 used for growing trees" 



Dr. Compton attempts to demonstrate the truth of this statement 

 by asking the following question: "If 95 per cent of the land of the 

 United States were thus determined to be better suited for pasture 

 land than for any other purpose, would 95 per cent be used for that 

 purpose and we liecome a nation of herdsmen?" His argument is on 

 a par with this : "if all the streets of Chicago were paved with choco- 

 late gum-drops, would they be sticky after a rain?" 



Dr. Compton is evidently afraid of facts, and justly so, because 

 they do not fit in well with the arguments he tries to make. The pro- 

 portion of area under forest in the United States is very nearly the 

 same as in Germany, a little more than one-fourth. Moreover, the 

 German forest area is actually producing timber, and yet, in spite of 

 the small per capita consumption of wood in that country, it produces 

 barely two-thirds of the wood needed for domestic consumption. 



In fact, much of the area classed as forest land in this country is 

 not best adapted for timber production in the future, and will not be- 

 come a part of the future forest lands. We have therefore actually a 

 smaller proportion of forest land than Germany. It is ridiculous, in 

 view of our present large per capita consumption and poorly managed 

 forest lands, to assume that we have more timberland than we need. 

 The existing shortage of houses, estimated at a million or more, to- 

 gether with the present high prices for lumber which put it almost 

 out of the reach of ordinary buyers and which are due, Dr. Compton 

 asserts, to growing scarcity of timber, does not indicate that the coun- 

 try needs to fear the awful prospect of producing lumber to "house 

 five times the number of people it could feed," even if the 400 or 450 



