The Forest Industries 67 



lumber ? and to what extent is it likely that substi- 

 tutes will be found for the use of wood ? 



In the preceding chapter we have spoken of the 

 legend, formerly so widely believed in, of the inex- 

 haustible supply of merchantable timber in the pri- 

 meval woods of the country. That story is no 

 longer credited, and even the lumbermen are fully 

 convinced now that the giving out of the original 

 material is a mere question of time. Nowhere in 

 North America is lumber fit for general building 

 purposes cut from second-growth timber, that is, 

 from timber which has grown from seedlings since 

 the original trees have been removed. Where a 

 second-growth crop of pine and other conifers is 

 now harvested, it is being used in various manufac- 

 turing industries. Where lumbermen, cutting con- 

 struction material, speak of " second growth," they 

 merely refer to timber which they left standing 

 thirty or forty years ago because the trees were 

 then too small and they culled only the larger in- 

 dividuals. Exhaustion of timber supply, therefore, 

 is, under present conditions, identical with exhaus- 

 tion of the supply found in virgin or primeval 

 forest. 



A distinction must be made between exhausting 

 the lumber supply of a whole country and that of 

 a particular region. The former would be an un- 

 doubted national calamity ; the latter may, under 

 some circumstances, be a benefit. In the second 

 part of this volume, when we come to speak of the 

 manner in which our forest resources ought to be 



