THE WAR AGAINST WOOD WASTE 213 



Government men have learned how to season boards in a few 

 weeks without splitting or warping. 



All this work, of course, dovetails in with the forester's 

 efforts to decrease waste in the woods itself. 



In the woods, the forester is teaching and practicing careful 

 cutting to prevent the waste that comes from leaving high 

 stumps, or from discarding parts of the tree that should be 

 utilized. And the forester, too, is speeding up nature by aiding 

 the trees to get more light and by planting those acres that 

 nature is powerless to reach. 



In all this tale of tree growth and tree waste, we may get 

 some idea of the vast effort nature must put forth to produce 

 a little wood. At the beginning of a forest, a hundred thousand 

 seedlings may start and spring into being on a single acre. One 

 by one, crowding, competition, windfall, drought, and disease 

 take their toll and of the final, mature stand, not over ten trees 

 may be left to make the harvest. Of these, in the process of 

 manufacture, perhaps three will become lumber and at last 

 one or two may find their way to the finished product. Two 

 out of a hundred thousand! Small wonder, then, that the for- 

 ester and lumberman, everyone who uses wood has a very 

 definite interest in this unceasing war against wood^ waste. 



We who are the greatest nation of wood users in the world 

 can not afford to be the greatest nation of wood wasters. 



