266 A NATIONAL PLAN FOE AMERICAN FORESTRY 



If, according to Boyce's estimate, American paper consumption 

 in 1950 is to be the equivalent of 22 million cords of wood, and if 

 domestic wood hereafter supplies 45 percent of the total requirement, 

 the consumption of domestic pulpwood in 1950 will be only 9.9 

 million cords. If domestic wood continues to lose ground in competi- 

 tion with foreign resources, the figure will be even less. However, 

 with adequate timberlands of our own there is no justification for any 

 plan that does not look to providing for total pulpwood requirements 

 independent of imports. 



The primary cause for rapid increase in our relative dependence 

 upon foreign resources has been the insufficiency of pulpwood in our 

 older spruce-pulp producing regions, that is, New England, New 

 York, Pennsylvania, and the Lake States, to meet increased require- 

 ments. The industry has had to go to more distant sources, either at 

 home or abroad. Figure 7 shows graphically how our newer regions 

 have been developed from a comparatively small place in 1904 to 

 supply half the domestic wood used in 1929. Consumption from this 

 source increased nearly fourfold in the 10 years beginning in 1919. 

 Even so, domestic wood was unable to hold its relative position in 

 competition with imports, dropping from 60 percent of total require- 

 ments in 1919 to 45 percent in 1929. 



Newer woods as well as newer regions occupy an increasing place 

 in the domestic pulping industry, but without any great decrease in 

 the relative amount of spruce in our total paper consumption. It is 

 true that spruce wood, both domestic and imported, pulped in our 

 own mills increased but little from 1904 to 1929, and furnished only 

 22 percent of our total wood requirements in 1929 as compared with 

 67 percent in 1904. (See fig. 8.) But assuming imports of pulp and 

 paper to represent also requirements for spruce, which is more or less 

 the case, then spruce supplied approximately 80 percent of our wood 

 requirements in 1904, dropped to 70 percent in 1919, and has practi- 

 cally held that position since. The extent to which spruce continues to 

 dominate the industry is sometimes lost sight of by considering only 

 domestic pulp production. 



In 1929 spruce represented some 46 percent of all wood consumed 

 in domestic pulp production, hemlock 16 percent, pines 16 percent, 

 and all other woods 22 percent. The use of hemlock may be taken to 

 represent substittuion for spruce in the production of mechanical and 

 sulphite pulps, and the use of pine to represent a shifting of pulp 

 production to sulphate. 



The relative shift to broader bases of supply is further illustrated by 

 figure 9. There has been little change in the quantity of mechanical 

 pulp made from domestic wood since 1904, but whereas this wood 

 constituted 32 percent of total wood requirements in 1904, it was only 

 9 percent in 1929; in the same period dependence on foreign timber 

 resources for mechanical pulp increased from 10 percent to 18 percent 

 of the total requirement. Domestic wood for sulphite pulp made up 

 36 percent of our requirements in 1904 and only 19 percent in 1930, 

 while dependence on foreign resources increased from 15 percent to 28 

 percent of the total. The situation is almost reversed in the sulphate 

 field. Sulphate pulp represented only 2 percent of total pulpwood 

 requirements in 1909, practically all imported. By 1923, imports of 

 sulphate pulp represented 6 percent of total wood requirements, but 

 domestic production had grown up to the same proportions. By 1930 



