REVIEWS 733 



The Senate resolution, while mentioning several specific lines of 

 inquiry, is so broad in scope that the Forest Service has been able to 

 present a very comprehensive survey of the forest problems now faced 

 by our Nation. 



For the first time in our history the country begins to realize the 

 important part that wood products play in our industrial life. Our 

 forests have been so vast that it has always been possible to secure 

 plenty of raw material at reasonable prices. As one region has been 

 cut out, other regions have been opened up and the market amply 

 supplied. It has required a crisis like the great war, with its after 

 effects, to reveal' our basic dependence on timber and wood products, 

 and also to reveal the extent to which our forest supplies have already 

 been depleted. 



We have experienced a real shortage of lumber. The Capper Re- 

 port graphically describes how this shortage has reacted to embarrass 

 many industries and individual users. The first effect of it was to 

 send up prices to the highest point ever known. During the war 

 lumber production was greatly reduced, existing stocks at the mills 

 and in the yards of distributors were drained down and often practi- 

 cally exhausted, and the logging and manufacturing industry was 

 disorganized and unprepared to meet the large demands resulting from 

 the resumption of indi 'strial activities following the armistice. De- 

 ficiency of adequate and efficient labor, frequent shortage of cars, and 

 unfavorable conditions of logging were added difficulties that retarded 

 recovery and held down production. With little or no surplus in the 

 yards consumers were dependent on current production and this below 

 normal and far below the real needs of the country. Under such 

 conditions there was sharp competition among different wood users 

 for the available raw material. As expressed in the Capper Report, 

 "Competition during the past few months has been very largely among 

 consumers for generally inadequate supplies. Under any conditions 

 such a reversal in the fundamental situation would result in high 

 prices ; but the shortage and demands have been so extreme that whole- 

 some restraints as to prices which might safely be paid have been 

 removed, and in many cases it has been possible to pass on to the 

 consumer, and even to augment, almost any price increases." It was 

 an auction market run wild, with prices that bore no relation to cosi 

 of production but depending only on the frantic demand of builders 

 and other users to secure raw materials needed to carry out their 

 contracts. 



