SOUTHERN HORIZONS 



hundred million acres of forests, more woodland acres 

 than in 1860. Throughout the South are scattered seven- 

 teen thousand sawmills, most of them little "grasshop- 

 per" mills that move from place to place. Every year 

 they stack up forty per cent of all the lumber cut in the 

 United States. From these same Southern forests comes 

 the pulpwood six to twelve inches and under, too small 

 to make lumber to make eighty per cent of all Amer- 

 ican kraft paper. 



This enormous treasure house of lignocellulose is not 

 pre-empted by big interests. Three-quarters of the land- 

 owners hold fewer than five hundred acres each. All 

 the paper companies together own only five million 

 acres: big lumber operators but twice that much. Be- 

 tween them they control less than a tenth of the total 

 acreage. Within this vast area of small, individual 

 ownership, over half a million workers are employed 

 in the woods and the sawmills. 



Yet Southern woodlands are still resources that are 

 not utilized to their fullest. The foresters who have 

 cruised the territory making expert appraisals tell us 

 that these woodlands could grow at least twice as many 

 trees. By intelligent care they could provide an ade- 

 quate, year-after-year supply of pine for lumber and 

 pulpwood and naval stores, a perpetual inventory of 

 raw material giving regular employment to a million 

 Americans. 



But it is no longer possible to double the value of 

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