A NATIONAL PLAN FOB AMERICAN FORESTRY 281 



The French Navy grew from 30 vessels in 1661 to 244 at the death 

 of Colbert in 1683. The cost of building one large naval vessel in 

 the eighteenth century was around $18,500, of which more than $5,800 

 was for timber. According to French records of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury, the construction of one vessel armed with 100 to 200 cannon 

 required about 4,000 logs of best quality. According to other records, 

 1,000 cubic feet of wood was required for every cannon installed on 

 the ship, and 35 cubic feet for every ton of carrying capacity of the 

 merchant marine. Until the second half of the nineteenth century, 

 the navy and the merchant marine were built entirely of wood. 



In time of war many vessels were sunk or damaged and the demand 

 for wood for naval construction greatly increased. During the 

 Napoleonic wars the needs of the French navy amounted to more 

 than 9 million cubic feet a year. As late as 1846 the total volume of 

 timber used by the French fleet amounted to 23 million cubic feet. 

 Naval construction usually demanded timber of large size. Not 

 every country possessed a sufficient supply of such timber. Naval 

 timber became, therefore, an important item of international trade 

 during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Baltic coun- 

 tries furnished large quantities, as did also the virgin forests of the 

 American Colonies. As early as 1754 South and North Carolina 

 exported 1,876,330 boards, 210,000 ship timbers, and 3,042,000 feet 

 of other wood for naval construction. 



At the beginning of the nineteenth century many parts of Europe 

 still had large forests and preserved to a considerable extent the 

 stamp of wooden culture. Sombart thus describes the condition 

 which existed in Germany a hundred years ago. "A traveler of that 

 time entered into the shade of a forest more often than now. Century- 

 old giants were still standing. The forest played an entirely different 

 role in the life of the people of that period than today. The material 

 culture of the northern countries was rooted in the forest. The 

 traveler encountered everywhere in the forest poor poeple who 

 collected branchwood, berries, leaf litter for bedding their stables, 

 and other forest by-products. The swine of the poor searched for 

 acorns in the forest for food. The cows and goats browsed on the 

 grass in the openings and on the edge of the forest. From the forest 

 man obtained raw material for the manufacture of all kinds of articles 

 which he sold at fairs and market places. The very culture of our 

 ancestors was Wooden. Fire was obtained from wood, from wood 

 were built houses and bridges; from wood were made innumerable 

 articles of everyday life, articles which we know only by name." 1 

 Such were the conditions in Germany a hundred years ago. 



USE OF WOOD IN MODERN TIMES 



The industrial revolution, beginning toward the end of the eight- 

 eenth century, brought mankind to the age of coal and iron, steam 

 and electricity. Coal gradually took the place of wood fuel, charcoal, 

 and peat. Iron and steel crowded out wood to a large extent from 

 the construction of ships and bridges, and in the manufacture of 

 implements of every kind. It would seem that the replacement of 

 wood with coal and iron would have ended or greatly reduced the 

 demand for wood. It would seem that the consumption of wood and 



1 Sombart, V. Der moderne Kapitalismus. I. 1922. 



