Conservation of Natural Resources in California. 





and the multiplying crossroad villages of the Middle West, they fed 

 prosperity, and fireswept desolation blotted the land of their origin. 



Thus was created a problem which is now not nation-wide, but 

 world-wide. New York bids against South America and the Orient 

 for the timber of the Pacific Northwest. Southern pine goes by water 

 from the Gulf to Gre.at Britain or the North Atlantic States; by rail, 

 to meet the output of Montana's forests on the plains. In 1911 the 

 United States exported domestic forest products to a total value of 

 over $100,000,000, of which Europe took over $55,000,000 worth and 

 South America about $25,000,000 worth. All the countries of eastern 

 Europe must import timber to meet the excess of their needs over the 

 home supply. Meanwhile, with an estimated home consumption of 23 

 billion cubic feet of wood annually, our depleted and abused forests 

 are producing by growth probably less than 7 billion feet. The Bureau 

 of Corporations of the Department of Commerce and Labpr estimates 

 the existing supply of saw timber in the United States at less than 

 3,000 billion board feet, which is equivalent to about 500 billion cubic 

 feet. Economists now recognize that, taking the world over, wood con- 

 sumption exceeds its growth, and that a crisis approaches. 



CALIFORNIA FORESTS. 



By COERT DuBois, District Forester. 



The State of California contains 101,310,080 acres of land. Of this, 

 27,000,000 acres lie in the nineteen National Forests controlled and 

 administered by the United States Forest Service. This means that all 

 the timber, the grazing lands, the water power, the minerals all the 

 natural resources which these forests contain are held in trust by 

 the Government for the benefit of the people, and sold or leased or given 

 away under free use permit in accordance with a well defined, scientific, 

 permanent policy. 



There is something of the army spirit in the Forest Service some- 

 thing of its coherence, its esprit de corps; but the significance under- 

 lying the two organizations is widely variant. The Army is a potential 

 engine of destruction ; the ideal of the Forest Service is a constructive 

 one. Conservation the intelligent use of natural resources is the key- 

 note of its policy. 



It can be seen more clearly as a great business, in its methods and 

 aims. Given a fund of capital such as the forests, the Forester and 

 his men must apply themselves to the problem of so handling this 

 capital that it will be of the greatest use to the present generation 

 without diminishing or detracting from the heritage of generations to 

 come. Let us look upon the work of the Service as a business a 



