REVIEWS 739 



of acres of private lands on which the owners are undertaking to use 

 methods that would secure a replacement of the forest after cutting 

 is negligible. The Capper Report states that "The area of idle or 

 largely idle land is being increased from 3 to 4 million acres annually 

 as the cutting and burning of forests continue." In spite of the 

 efforts of the past years in forestry, our problem especially as 

 related to private forests is unsolved, and there are required new 

 measures more effective than heretofore employed to make real and 

 effective headway. 



The Capper resolution not only made inquiry about the facts relat- 

 ing to the depletion of our forests, but it also requested specific in- 

 formation as to the relation of forest depletion to the current high 

 prices of materials. In reply to this inquiry the Forest Service report 

 presents an exceptionally able analysis of the movement of lumber 

 prices during the war period and of the causes for the changes, and 

 points out the part played by forest depletion as an influencing factor 

 of importance. The violent upheaval of the lumber market that 

 occurred in 1919 and 1920 was of course not the result of any sudden 

 change in forest conditions, as many were led to believe by press dis- 

 cussions, for as a matter of fact, during the war the forests were 

 subject to less severe cutting than ordinarily. The prices of lumber 

 rose steadily in response to the same general causes affecting all com- 

 modities and there were also special conditions that were the immediate 

 occasion for the sudden skyrocketing of lumber prices. The great 

 demand for lumber, for building and a multitude of industrial uses, 

 following the war "caught the industry not only with its stocks short 

 and broken from war conditions but unable, on account of labor diffi- 

 culties, lack of freight cars, and bad weather in important regions, to 

 respond rapidly with increased production. Aside from the general 

 causes affecting prices of most commodities, the expansion of credit 

 accompanied by currency inflation and the wave of speculation and 

 extravagance, an 'auction' market would no doubt have resulted from 

 the frenzied competition of buyers to obtain the limited stocks avail- 

 able, wholly inadequate to satisfy current demands." For the condi- 

 tions that made possible such an aggravated situation as existed we 

 must look deeper and wc find that forest depletion was an important 

 contributing factor. 



Forest depletion means concentration of lumber production in a 

 few chief operating regions. Already there remains only one such 



