FUTURE OF FORESTRY 169 



protecting and improving their state forests, but the 

 private owner considers his little woodlot worthy of care 

 and attention. As a result the forests in these countries 

 are unusually well kept and free from damage so that a 

 net revenue ranging from one dollar and fifty cents to 

 six dollars per acre per year is obtained. The awakening 

 of interest among the private timber land owners in 

 this country is the great need at present for only one- 

 fourth of the forest land and one-fifth of the standing 

 timber is owned by the Federal Government and the 

 States. Unless the owners of this great bulk of our 

 timber supply can be induced or assisted to practice 

 some sort of forestry upon their holdings the future 

 generations face a serious shortage of desirable forest 

 products. 



Forestry at Home and Abroad. The true situation 

 is of course that the American lumberman regards 

 harvesting of the forest crop as a business, and rightly 

 so. He cannot afford to take steps to perpetuate the 

 nation's supply of lumber which would reduce his 

 profit to the vanishing point. At a recent gathering 

 of lumbermen a remark was made concerning the great 

 waste in American logging; that only forty per cent 

 of the tree reached the consumer in contrast to the sit- 

 uation in Germany where tops, branches and even 

 stumps were sold. In reply one of the lumbermen 

 stated that the amount of waste was not the fault of 

 ;he lumberman, but rather market conditions were to 

 blame ; that the average timber operator would be only 

 too glad to sell stumps, tops and branches and would 

 even sell the holes the stumps came from if there were 

 a demand for them. We simply cannot afford to do 

 things that the average foreign forester considers 

 necessary. 



