91 



about, not by the proved superiority of the substitute but by the progres- 

 sive exhaustion and failure to replace the needed supphes of wood for 

 this purpose. 



Consumption of W'ood for Fuel on Farms 



The largest consumers of wood for fuel are those who own wood- 

 lots and cut their own wood. A certain amount of wood is sold to city 

 and town dwellers and to farmers who do not own woodland, but this 

 quantity is limited by the comparatively high cost of transportation of 

 wood and the greater labor required in cutting and splitting, storing 

 and piling the wood for use as compared with coal, as well as by the 

 necessity of seasoning green wood. To dwellers in Chicago, wood is 

 a luxury and not a staple. The abundance and wide distribution of coal 

 throughout the state and its greater convenience in handling and storing, 

 smaller requirement in labor, and greater facility for heating and holding 

 fire over night in cold weather have led to a wide substitution of coal 

 for wood, even for domestic purposes, on farms which have wood-lots. 

 Coal and oil almost completely replace wood as a source of power in 

 industry. 



From the returns of a questionnaire* it was calculated that farm- 

 ers consume 93.166 per cent of all the wood burned for fuel ; and that 

 wood supplies 25.59 per cent of the combined or total consumption by 

 farmers of wood and coal. The consumption of fuel oil was not ob- 

 tained, and would reduce the percentage of wood to the total of all 

 fuels used by farmers. The basis of this calculation is the questionnaire 

 to farmers, which indicated that as a class they purchased as much wood 

 as they sold, and hence consumed the equivalent of the production of 

 cordwood from farm wood-lots, leaving the cities to be supplied by the 

 equivalent of cordwood from remaining timber lands. The average 

 yield per acre annually was .332 cords, or a total consumed on farms 

 alone, of 885,792 cords from 2,668,050 acres of farm wood-lots. By 

 using standard weights of wood of different species, and comjniting the 

 true average based on an approximate per cent of different species used 

 as cordwood, a fuel equivalent of .8 ton of bituminous coal was obtained 

 to one cord of air-dry wood. A cord of black locust or hickory is the 

 equivalent of a ton of coal. A cord of oak is approximately equivalent 

 to .9 ton of coal ; beech, walnut, and ash to .8 ton ; red maple, gum, 



' See Appendix, Note 6, for tabulated data. 



