556 A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



1929, which was a relatively poor season. The industry is a leading 

 one in parts of Vermont, New York, Ohio, and other States. It 

 furnishes employment and a source of income in late winter or early 

 spring, and has an important bearing on local phases of transpor- 

 tation, such as roadbuilding, as well as on the confectionery industry 

 generally. 



The American tanning trade utilizes an enormous amount of forest 

 products, both domestic and imported. In 1925 (the latest year for 

 which census figures are available) 158,942 tons of hemlock bark, 

 103,775 tons of oak bark, 104,268 tons of chestnut wood, and 1,139 

 tons of sumac extract from American forest lands were consumed in 

 the tanning industry. This material is chiefly produced in the 

 Eastern, Southeastern, and Pacific Coast States, although oak and 

 sumac species are distributed (and potentially available) almost 

 throughout the United States. 



Native chestnut is the source of nearly one third of the vegetable 

 tanning materials grown in this country, wood unsuitable for lumber 

 purposes being chiefly employed for this purpose. The natural 

 range of chestnut in the United States is from central New England, 

 through Pennsylvania, Maryland, and northern Virginia, following 

 the southern Appalachians (where it reaches its best development) 

 into the northern parts of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, and 

 westward into central and eastern Tennessee and Kentucky, to 

 Indiana and the more eastern portions of lower Michigan. Unfor- 

 tunately the chestnut blight has already spread throughout the 

 range of chestnut. In 1930 the Division of Forest Pathology of the 

 Bureau of Plant Industry estimated that at least 80 percent of the 

 chestnut trees as far south as Virginia were either dead or infected 

 with blight, and the infection is still spreading. Thoroughly healthy 

 stands are rare, perhaps nonexistent. Fortunately, however, the 

 wood loses its tannin content very slowly, and trees dead 25 or 30 

 years are, so far as their wood is then sound, practically as good as 

 living trees for use in the tanning industry. In spite of this devas- 

 tating scourge, commercial stands of chestnut still occur, occupying 

 perhaps about 15 million acres, composed of living (though mostly 

 diseased), dying, and dead trees. Blight-killed trees remain usable 

 for lumber for 5 or 6 years after death, and for an even longer period 

 for other purposes, such as posts, pulp wood, fiber board, and tannic 

 acid. 



Large sums of money have been spent by the Federal Government, 

 by the State of Pennsylvania, and by private individuals in Delaware, 

 and energetic effort has been made by other public and private 

 agencies to combat the chestnut-blight disease, without avail. Many 

 authorities believe that the species, unless some unforeseen method of 

 treatment or control soon appears or blight-resistant strains are 

 shortly developed, is doomed to extinction, necessitating reliance on 

 oak, pine, and other species eventually to supplant chestnut. Ashe 

 (in 1912) estimated the yield of average 60-year-old stands of chestnut 

 in Tennessee, based on a cut of trees of 10 inches in diameter and 

 larger, as varying (according to site quality) from $32.70 to $66.80 

 per acre annually, with stumpage based at $1 a cord. Under such 

 conditions and in the event that means were later forthcoming of 

 stopping the blight or of developing immunity, chestnut growing on 

 these cheap forest lands might be a very profitable undertaking. 



