FORESTRY. 161 



Spealjing of our total supplj^ and demand of forest material, as near as I 

 can figure it the situation in regard to the lumber supply is about this: 

 The amount of wood of all sorts and shapes, for lumber in the arts and 

 buildings, railroad building, fence material, for fuel — which is the largest 

 requirement for wood in the United States, curious as it maj' appear to 

 those who use coal— amounts to from twenty to twenty-five billion 

 cubic feet per year. It is an almost inconceivable quantity, and it is 

 almost ten times as much as any other nation uses. Our whole civiliza- 

 tion, in fact, rests upon our lumber, and, therefore, it is an important 

 subject to look after. 



In addition, we burn up wantonly many million cubic feet in our yearly 

 conflagrations. According to a canvass which I made several years ago, 

 we have a forest area of less than five hundred million acres. Now, we 

 know from the experience of other nations, and especially Germany and 

 France, how much wood can be grown per acre per j^ear under good man- 

 agement. These nations treat their woodlands like a crop; as you know 

 how many bushels of oats per acre you can grow, or of wheat or of corn, 

 or at least a certain range within which your crops move, so they know 

 what their wood crop is likely to be under given conditions. We know 

 from them that fifty cubic feet per acre per year is a good average crop of 

 wood over a large country and if we apply this figure to the acreage of 

 the United States we find that we are now using just twice as much wood 

 material as can possibly grow on the acreage we have under wood. We are 

 now, to be sure, using the wood that has grown up for centuries before — 

 our surplus, our capital— but we use twice as much as our interest, our 

 yearly growth. That is the position we are in regarding our forest resources. 



Eegarding our forest conditions, I think those of you who have travelled 

 will bear me out in the statement that in many parts of the country, 

 along all the railroads almost, they are in a deplorable condition. 

 Whole mountain sides are being burned over in the West. They do not 

 count fires there by acres but by square miles, and a thousand square 

 miles, more or less, a year is a matter about which nobody has much con- 

 cern I tried to ascertain the loss by fires the last year, a very unsatis- 

 factory piece of statistical work, and found that the small percentage 

 of which reports could be obtained represented a loss of at least twenty- 

 five million dollars during that period. The presumption is that these 

 figures may be easily doubled in actual value of timber. To this we must 

 add the loss— in prospective value— which the destruction by forest fires 

 always brings with it. It is very difiBcult to ascertain such facts as we 

 need to present, and we must refer to this difficulty as an excuse for the 

 failure of our forestry friends, who are forced to make general state- 

 ments which they cannot bear out by specific facts. 



Another difficulty they meet is one that all educational effort brings 

 with it. You know how long it takes to get an education. While it is 

 difficult to get an education for our children and ourselves, it is much 

 more difficult to educate a nation. Now, as a nation we have been edu- 

 cated to wastefulness. Our pioneer life here, the hewing out of our civiliza- 

 tion from the woods, has created a feeling that timber is an obstruction, 

 is not worth anything only to be removed, no matter what the conse- 

 quence is. To eradicate this sentiment, which is luite natural, and to 

 inculcate a new spirit, which will teach our people to look upon our 

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