i 5 2 FORESTS AND MANKIND 



There are only a few species of trees that may be profitably 

 used at present for paper making. We are slowly finding new 

 ways of utilizing additional species, but today two-thirds of 

 our pulp comes from spruce, fir, and hemlock. Of these three 

 important trees we have not nearly enough to support the 

 drain of the paper industry and we have now reached the stage 

 where many pulp and paper mills either possess no timber of 

 their own, or only very limited supplies. Today more than 

 half of the wood used for paper in the United States comes 

 from outside our boundaries chiefly from the spruce forests 

 of Canada. We must depend on foreign imports for millions 

 of cords of wood and wood pulp. This is not through any 

 failure of our own forests' ability to produce these species in 

 abundance, for with our vast area of forest land we could grow 

 more wood for paper than we shall need for many years. The 

 great fertility of our forest soils should make cheap domestic 

 sources of raw material entirely practicable. So far we have 

 made no serious effort to become self-supporting. Yet the time 

 is not far off when we shall have to adopt some nation-wide 

 program for raising these species, valuable for paper making, 

 or our industry will have to depend almost entirely on imports 

 from foreign countries. 



TKis enormous demand for paper which today consumes ten 

 million cords of wood yearly is bound to increase. To offset 

 this, it is of course quite possible that methods will be dis- 

 covered for using many additional tree species. But the main 

 reliance for abundantly and fully meeting our pulp wood re- 

 quirements must be placed ultimately on ourselves growing 

 our paper producing species. Alaska, with her practically un- 

 touched forests, will supply two million cords annually, or 



