16 Conditions Affecting New York Lumber Supply 
utilization and preservation of wood. Of this quantity five 
billion feet could be saved in the mills and shops and the 
other five billion. by extending standard preservative treatment 
to many of those forms of timber exposed to the weather, such 
as ties, poles, posts, piles, mine props, shingles, and exposed 
construction. Ten billion feet is more than one-fourth of the 
annual lumber cut. As a conservative estimate it would be 
worth a quarter of a billion dollars. This would not be net 
gain because of the planning, labor, and preservatives necessary 
to accomplish the saving. Yet it would be the most practical 
means of prolonging the service of our rapidly vanishing vir- 
gin timber, and bridging the interval of shortage which is now 
inevitable before American forests can begin, under manage 
ment, to yield an annual supply approaching satisfaction of 
the national needs. 
Forrest MANAGEMENT REQUIRED. 
The wastage of New York’s forest resources, deplorable as 
it may now appear, was probably no worse than many other 
Commonwealths have suffered. It was unavoidable because, in 
the presence of an apparently endless supply, public opinion 
was not moved to call a halt and could not be educated rapidly 
enough to check destruction until most of the damage had been 
done. 
Many other communities, not excluding parts of France and 
Germany which are now well forested, went through similar 
slow stages of change in their economic viewpoint, and only 
determined to save and grow timber when they had been forced 
to do so by the sharp pinch of necessity. But there is an 
important difference between their situation and ours. They 
had the abundant natural forests of North America to draw 
upon, while we no longer have that advantage. 
The original forests of New York have been mainly eut 
over twice or more. The store of forest products our fathers 
called inexhaustible has shrunk to a rapidly dwindling supply, 
as shown by the diagram used as a frontispiece. 
