A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 197 



smaller degree under similar conditions in the spruce and hemlock 

 forests of the Lake region, that the American industry has largely 

 centered. This development also carried with it a considerable part 

 of the sulphate-pulp industry, which could have located elsewhere 

 and made use of other species. Even the soda-pulp industry, which 

 began and is now well developed in Pennsylvania, manufactures a 

 large part of its product from the aspen in the northern spruce forests. 



The overcentralization of the industry intensifies the problem 

 created by imports from other countries of pulpwood, pulp, and paper, 

 and it is the chief factor in the situation which necessitates pulpwood 

 imports. Fundamentally, we have imported pulpwood because the 

 supplies of raw material tributary to the pulp mills of the New Eng- 

 land, Middle Atlantic, and Lake regions have become increasingly 

 scarce. 



Pulp manufacture entered these restricted regions later than 

 lumbering, and has reduced their diminished supplies of timber still 

 further. Many pulp and paper mills have either no timber of their 

 own or only very limited amounts, and few have permanent supplies. 

 In the meanwhile, our paper requirements have gro\yn faster than, 

 under existing conditions, pulpwood could be obtained from our 

 forests or wood pulp and paper could be produced in our mills. To 

 keep up even in part with increasing demands, the industry was forced 

 either to import both pulpwood and wood pulp, or to move to other 

 regions of the United States. 



Of late, a paper industry has sprung up in the lower Mississippi 

 Valley, and the industry in the Pacific Coast region has expanded. In 

 the main, however, the industry as a whole has chosen rather to import 

 first pulpwood and then wood pulp and paper, on an ever-increasing 

 scale (described in the later section headed "Timber Requirements") 

 than to move. The principal factors influencing the choice were as 

 follows : 



Relatively large plant investments make it more difficult for pulp 

 and paper mills to follow the retreating timber stands than is the case 

 in lumber manufacture. Comparatively few woods, as previously 

 indicated, have been used in paper making. Then, nearness to paper 

 markets has been necessary to keep down transportation costs. 

 These factors and the requirement, in the case of mechanical-pulp 

 manufacture, of abundant and cheap power have tended to confine 

 the production of paper to but few regions. Inertia alone has doubt- 

 less been a contributing factor in slowing up seemingly logical develop- 

 ment. Perhaps one of the chief factors in the situation has been a 

 lack of the technical knowledge needed to make the best use of the 

 pulping resources of the countrv as a whole. 



The great bulk of pulpwood imports into the New England, Middle 

 Atlantic, and Lake regions consists of spruce and aspen. Fir pulp- 

 wood imports are comparatively small, and hemlock even smaller. 



About 70 percent of the New England supply of spruce and fir is in 

 Maine. (Table 5.) Perhaps as much as a sixth of the Maine timber 

 is too scattered for profitable cutting, although in reasonably acces- 

 sible territory. About a quarter is in a region now relatively inacces- 

 sible. Although some pulp manufacturers of New England are 

 importing pulpwood from Canada in order to allow their American 

 stumpage to build up by growth the majority are seemingly import- 

 ing because the regional supply of pulpwood is not as available as 



