INDUSTRIAL FORESTRY 235 



In the face of our increasing dependence on foreign sources 

 of paper pulp supply, forestry takes on the quality of necessity 

 for paper companies are importing wood pulp in larger quan- 

 tities each year. Even some of our lumber companies are begin- 

 ning to find it necessary to import. One mill in the South has 

 cut out its local timber and is now bringing redwood logs 

 down the California coast through the Canal and across the 

 Gulf. Only in this way can it continue to exist. Other mills in 

 the South are importing logs from Mexico and Central Amer- 

 ica and, as the years pass, they will probably import increasing 

 quantities. But it is not an economical measure. It is from many 

 standpoints an unsatisfactory and temporary measure. Yet, it 

 can be corrected by one thing only the growing of sufficient 

 wood crops nearer at home. Forestry undertaken in time would 

 have insured a far cheaper and more accessible source of supply. 



So private forestry is increasing. It is bound to increase, al- 

 though, in certain regions it will find favor much faster than 

 in others. Naturally, it will come most rapidly where financial 

 returns promise to be greatest. Today it seems to be waiting 

 on the exhaustion, partial or complete, of the wild sources of 

 supply that in the past have kept the prices of forest products 

 below the possibility of timber growing. For private forestry 

 first and last is an economic venture. Yet it is entirely practical. 

 It is more than that. It is inescapable because forestry is the 

 cheapest method of producing that world-wide necessity 

 wood. 



