STRUCTURAL PURPOSES 



Mountain and Pacific, with fully half the reserve supply in the 

 Pacific Northwest. Rail transportation links each of these 

 with the points of demand. Agricultural and industrial devel- 

 opments have made the gTeat central states and the middle tier 

 eastward to the Atlantic the largest consuming centers. Water 

 transportation now brings the enormous timber supply of the 

 Pacific Coast closer to the larger centers of population in the 

 East; while the cheaper water rates also result in a large move- 

 ment of lumber from the Gulf ports and the south Atlantic 

 states to the distributing cities in the Northeast. 



The present merchantable supply of timber will last nearly 

 sixty years at the present rate of cutting. This, however, by no 

 means indicates that the supply will be exhausted at the end of 

 that period nor that exorbitant prices will ultimately prevail. 

 The protection being given to forests against destruction by 

 fire, the lower per capita consumption, the use of timber more 

 wisely and by treatment or selection assuring longer life in 

 service, the adoption of more intensive and less wasteful log- 

 ging methods, the utilization of non-agricultural lands for for- 

 est production, and the annual growth throughout the enor- 

 mous forest area will, before a period of exhaustion is at hand, 

 bring the nation's annual wood production up to an amount 

 approximating the consumption, and assure an adequate sup- 

 ply for an indefinite period. 



Messrs. W. B. Greeley and H. S. Betts, of the U. S. Forest 

 Service, in a paper presented at the International Engineering 

 Congress in San Francisco September, 1915, state as follows: 



"With its enormous areas of non-agricultural lands, apparently best 

 suited to the production of timber, in the natural order of things, it is prob- 

 able that the United States will not only supply its own needs but continue to 

 be a large exporter of timber. Even the quality of the lumber placed upon 

 the market, which is of primary interest to the structural engineer, will change 

 but very gradually as old sources of supply renew their stands of merchant- 

 able material. For the next thirty or forty years at least, there is no ques- 

 tion as to the ability of the United States to furnish high-grade structural 

 timbers from its southern pine and Douglas fir forests, to meet almost any 

 demand for such material from any portion of the world." 



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