86 



Conservation of Natural Resources in California. 



Some one has figured that a big Sunday newspaper needs twenty 

 acres of pulp wcod to make the paper for one edition. The Chicago 

 Tribune, a chance instance, uses 200,000 pounds of paper each Sunday, 

 or 400,000 each week. Do your own multiplying. We used of domestic 

 spruce alone for pulp wood in one year 1,785,680 cords. The average 

 stand of spruce pulp wood in the regions where it is cut is probably 

 about ten cords per acre ; so that of such spruce land we require at 

 least 178,500 acres annually. A ton of paper takes about two cords of 

 spruce in the making to be exact, about 1,750 pounds of paper pulp. 



We use other woods for pulp now, hemlock, balsam, pine, poplar; 



Slaughter of the forest. An old burn. Picture the frightful waste of good wood 

 when a great forest region is reduced to this by repeated burnings. It has never- 

 been cut. 



3,661,176 cords was our total for 1906. We used in that year 2,327,844 

 tons of pulp. Since each ton probably cost on the average two cords of 

 some sort of wood, not allowing anything for waste, there were over four 

 million cords cut somewhere, mostly in the United States ; which means 

 something like a million acres a year for pulp. Call it a half million 

 for close measure. Do some figuring. If it costs twenty acres a Sunday, 

 or forty acres a week, or 2,080 acres a year to print one daily news- 

 paper, what does it cost in acreage to print all the newspapers in all 

 the cities and towns of America? Add to this the enormous editions 

 of our magazines. Add to this the paper used in books. The total 



