A NATIONAL PLAN FOE AMERICAN FORESTRY 213 



management, particularly in private ownership where in many cases 

 the forest capital is so depleted or so inaccessible as to render long 

 periods of waiting and large expenditures necessary before revenues 

 can commence to come in on a sustained basis and at a rate in keeping 

 with the potential producing capacity of the land. 



The present relative distribution of our lumber cut, as well as the 

 historical trend of the cut regionally, is shown by table 14 and figures 

 15 and 16. The Lake, Central, and Middle Atlantic regions were the 

 most important lumber-producing regions in 1869, and at that time 

 each was cutting 2} billion board feet or more. The Lake continued 

 prominent, reaching its peak in the early nineties, although surpassed 

 shortly thereafter by the rapidly expanding cut in the South. 



