56 FORESTS AND MANKIND 



creasingly important problem to so manage the remaining for- 

 ests that they will produce more than they possibly can under 

 natural conditions. 



Compared to other countries, we Americans are a nation of 

 lavish wood users. The average citizen of the world uses thirty- 

 two cubic feet a year. We in America require two hundred and 

 twenty-eight cubic feet. Finland exceeds even that, for there 

 each person consumes an average of three hundred cubic feet 

 yearly. Man for man America uses five times as much wood as 

 Europe. 



The amount of wood used by a nation depends on many 

 things. It depends on racial habits, standards of living, and 

 stage of development. Countries like Egypt, use only about two 

 cubic feet per person. With the exception of Sweden alone, the 

 United States sends more of its timber to foreign countries than 

 any nation in the world. At the same time, it imports about as 

 much as it sends out. North Europe and northern North Amer- 

 ica ship large quantities of conifers for construction to all the 

 other continents. 



It is not always the most heavily-timbered countries that send 

 the greatest quantities of wood to foreign ports. South Amer- 

 ica which among all the regions of the world is best provided 

 with forests imports twice as much as she exports. That is 

 partly because it is cheaper for her to buy timber abroad than 

 to go back into the still inaccessible forests of her own con- 

 tinent and partly because the kinds of wood she requires are 

 not found abundantly in her own land. 



The forests of the world fall into three main groups: conifers 

 or softwoods, temperate hardwoods, and tropical hardwoods. 

 The last two groups might be combined into one great class of 



