AMERICAN LUMBER. 



BY B. E. FERNOW. 



[Bernhard Eduard Fernow, director and dean, New York State college of forestry-; 

 Cornell university since 1898; born Inowraclaw, Posen, Prussia, January 7, 1851; 

 educated at gymnasium, Bromberg forest academy, Muenden, and university of 

 Konigsberg; came to United States in 1876 and engaged in metallurgical business; 

 chief division of forestry, United States department of agriculture, 1886-98; chair- 

 man executive committee and first vice-president American Forestry Association; 

 was for some time editor of The Forester; Author: The White Pine, Economics of 

 Forestry.] 



One thousand million dollars a year is the wood bill of 

 the people of the United States for materials which they 

 derive from the virgin forest without any expenditure except 

 for harvesting and shaping the treasures, stored for centuries 

 for their use. About one half of this value represents the 

 cost of firewood, fencing, and other smaller materials, as 

 hoop poles for coopers' use, hop poles, bean poles, and the 

 like, while the other half is for lumber and other material 

 that requires bolt or log size and forms the basis of our enor- 

 mous wood consuming industries, which double the value of 

 the raw product by turning it into houses and barns, cradles 

 and coffins, tools and toys, and the ten thousand uses to 

 which it is adapted and upon which our modern civilization 

 depends. We hear much about the mining industry, the 

 coal fields, the importance of the iron and steel industry, 

 and about gold or silver we nearly came to civic war. And 

 yet the value of these last two products is not one tenth in 

 their annual output of what the forest furnishes ; the iron and 

 steel industry furnishes hardly one half the values of the 

 forest, and if we put all the mineral products, coal, metal, 

 petroleum, and every earthy material together, they fall forty 

 per cent below the value of the forest products, excelling the 

 most valuable portion of these, the sawmill product, only by 

 about fifty per cent. With such a showing we are justified 

 in placing our forest resources as second only in importance 

 to agriculture; wood crops next to food crops, both equally 

 indispensable. 



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