486 SCIENCE OF HOME AND COMMUNITY 



the forests give way to fields of grain and saw the boundary 

 of the unbroken forest gradually recede westward. 



Conditions of forests to-day. In later years as the market 

 value of trees for their different products attracted atten- 

 tion, the commercial spirit took control of the forests and 

 there resulted a reckless devastation of forests carried on by 

 private individuals without any effective effort on the part 

 of the government to stop or control the waste. As a result 

 our commercial forests to-day are restricted to five areas : 

 northern New England; the northern portion of Michigan, 

 Minnesota, and Wisconsin; the southern states; a section 

 along the Rocky Mountains ; and a section along the Pacific 

 Coast in Oregon and Washington. A bulletin published by 

 the National Forest Service in 1907 says: " This much is 

 true beyond doubt, that we are dangerously near a hard- 

 wood famine and have made no provision against it." 



This bulletin estimates that there were four hundred billion 

 feet of hardwood standing and that the country was using 

 hardwood at the rate of twenty-five billions annually. This 

 would furnish a supply for only sixteen years, not consider- 

 ing the amount of annual growth. This diminishing supply 

 of hardwoods has been well reflected in the advancing prices. 

 Between 1898 and 1907 the price of white oak rose from $55 

 to $80 ; of yellow poplar from $31 to $53 ; and of hard maple 

 from $20 to $32 ; or an increase of from 50 to 60 per cent 

 in ten years. 



Another bulletin published by the Forest Service estimates 

 that the annual consumption of all kinds of wood in the 

 United States is three times the annual growth. At this rate 

 it is estimated that the supply of virgin forests will be ex- 

 hausted in thirty or forty years, and then the country must 

 depend on the second growth of timber for its supplies. In 

 spite of the substitutes that are being used for wood in build- 

 ing, the use of wood is constantly increasing, so that more wood 

 per capita is now being used than ever before in this country. 



