A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 195 



material used by the industry; no satisfactory substitute has been 

 found for these woods. The good-quality, dense, tough ash, much 

 preferred for handles, was formerly supplied from excellent stands in 

 the States north of the Ohio River, but these are now largely cut out 

 and most of the present supply must be obtained from the lower 

 Mississippi Valley. Present supplies of hickory come mainly from the 

 South where the greater part of the better and more accessible timber 

 has been taken. Not only must larger areas be covered to obtain 

 suitable material, but more and more it is becoming necessary to 

 work into the districts remote from transportation facilities. 



VEHICLES AND AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS 



The vehicle and agricultural implements industries, located mainly 

 in the Middle West, compete with the handle industry for southern 

 hickory and ash. They also compete with other wood-using indus- 

 tries, including furniture and veneer manufacturers, for other hard- 

 woods. Notwithstanding the extensive substitution of metal for 

 wood in vehicles and agricultural implements, these industries are 

 greatly handicapped by a scarcity of suitable timber for their products. 



AVAILABILITY OF PULPWOOD SUPPLIES 



The statistics of total timber stand of paper pulpwood species, 

 given in table 5, require interpretation in the light of present avail- 

 ability even more than the statistics on saw-timber stands. Thus 

 it appears that for the United States as a whole the present stand 

 of softwoods suitable for pulp is 280 times the normal annual pulp- 

 wood cut, and of hardwoods over 800 times the cut. In spite of this, 

 we import more pulpwood, or its equivalent in wood pulp and paper, 

 than we cut in our own forests. Obviously, only a small part of our 

 1,830 million cords of standing timber of the species now used in 

 ulp and paper manufacture is available to the Nation's mills, or at 

 ?ast as available as some of the foreign supplies. 



Sixty years ago the quantity of wood used as a raw material for 

 paper in the United States was insignificant. Today about 85 per- 

 cent of our paper has its origin in the forest. Wood, in short, is the 

 basic raw material for paper pulp. Although pulp can be produced 

 from any fibrous material, no source of cellulose has yet been dis- 

 covered which, either in suitability for most types of paper pulp or 

 in cost per unit weight, challenges the supremacy of wood. 



Not all kinds of wood, however, are at present available for use 

 in the manufacture of pulp. The spruces, firs, hemlocks, and pines, 

 among softwoods; and cotton woods and aspens, yellow poplar, birches, 

 beech, maples, and gums, among hardwoods, are now used in sufficient 

 quantities to warrant separate mention. The fact that different 

 species require different processes for reduction to pulp tends to 

 restrict their availability, particularly with respect to established 

 mills. 



STANDARD PULPWOODS AND PULPING PROCESSES 



There are four standard processes of making paper pulp from 

 wood the mechanical, the sulphite, the sulphate, and the soda. 

 Each is especially adapted to the manufacture of certain grades of 

 paper or to the pulping of certain woods. The various grades of 

 papers, in fact, usually contain varying proportions of two or more 



E 



