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million acres capable of producing at least 250,000,000 cubic feet of 

 wood annually. The present annual production is but 115,000,000 cubic 

 feet, and is rapidly diminishing. The stock of timber or forest capital 

 is being exhausted with no thought of the future and no wide-spread 

 application of sound principles of crop renewal and production. Grazing 

 is progressively ruining the best forest areas and fires are destroying 

 the poorer and less well-protected tracts. Yet these forests are still sup- 

 plying one half of the farmer's total needs for wood, one sixth of the 

 railroad ties used in the state's transportation system, sixty per cent 

 of the timber used in its mines, thirty per cent of the piling and twenty- 

 five per cent of the farmer's fuel, and one half of his fence posts. The ex- 

 haustion of these supplies will be felt in several industries, but its in- 

 fluence will fall most heavily upon the farmer who, deprived of local 

 sources of wood for fencing and buildings, will be forced to pay increas- 

 ingly higher prices for these necessities or cease to operate. 



On the other hand, the ownership of ninety-three per cent of the 

 woodlands of the state is in the hands of these farmers, who would be 

 the largest beneficiaries of their intensive use. There is enough wood- 

 land on farms to supply all the present needs of these farmers for wood 

 products if the wood-lots are properly managed. Farmers can get along 

 without extending their areas of pasturage, but they can not avoid the 

 use of wood or high-priced substitutes. Those who still have an over- 

 abundance of wood and perhaps have had wood for sale and failed to 

 realize a profit, are too apt to underestimate the value now and in the 

 future of the home supplies which they are drawing upon. They see 

 only the labor of getting out the wood crops. The farmer, because of 

 his ownership of comparatively small areas of woodland, can give it 

 more intensive care than any other class of owner and can make it 

 produce more per acre. His utilization can be practically 100 per cent. 

 The tops not suitable for lumber, ties, or even posts or props, can still 

 find service as home fuel or even sale as cordwood. It is to the farm- 

 owners of woodland, then, that the state must look first for the turn 

 of the tide and the establishment of proper practices in the care of 

 forest lands. With farm wood-lots in thrifty condition there will be a 

 constant production for sale of railroad cross-ties, mine timbers, and 

 even saw-timber, as well as of cordwood for consumption in cities. 



The farm owner knows many things about his woods, but as a rule 

 he does not know enough about either the possible future value of this 

 woodland or the methods necessary for its protection, reproduction, and 



