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Wood Inmbw is less serious than of hardwoods, because there is a touch 

 greater reserve supply of old timber. The coniferous forests are not, how- 

 ever, being handled materially better than the hardwoods, and the damage 

 by fire is much greater. We have not yet mastered the fires. The 

 coniferous forests are in the main cut without reference to their perpet- 

 uation, and the replacement and growth that does occur is far below 

 what is used and destroyed and only a small part of what the country 

 will need in the future. 



The most serious situation in regard to softwoods is that the old 

 centers of supply are being rapidly exhausted without adequate replace- 

 ment and our country must depend on material brought from great dis- 

 tances. The southern pine which has been a dominating factor in the 

 market for a number of years is already yielding to Pacific Coast lumber 

 in many places. This tendency will increase, for most of the old growth 

 yellow pine will be cut within fifteen to twenty years. This means that 

 the country is paying a constantly increasing freight bill for its lumber. 

 I don't know what freight bill Indiana pays. I think New York pays 

 over six million dollars a year. 



It is not sound national economy for a country of our size to have 

 to draw its lumber supplies from one section. The Atlantic States 

 should not be required to obtain their lumber from three thousand miles 

 away, with the high prices necessitated by the long transport. There 

 should be producing forests well distributed throughout the country. It 

 is of interest to the central states to have producing forests in Minnesota 

 and in the south. With the rapid depletion of these older centers and the 

 failure to replace them, the burdens upon the farmers and other consumers 

 in the central states and the east will increase each year. 



Many have urged that we are using more lumber than is really nec- 

 essary. It is urged that we can reduce our consumption of lumber and 

 use other materials. We might become a cement using nation like the 

 Mediterranean countries. We learned to do without a good many things 

 in the war. But that does not signify that it would react to our public 

 welfare to do so in peace times. Our consumption will decline if lumber 

 becomes so high priced as to be out of reach of the ordinary buyer. If 

 it is available, however, our total consumption will not decline; it will, 

 in my opinion, rise in the future. 



Europe is often cited as requiring a constantly smaller quantity of 

 lumber. In England the total consumption of lumber from 1851 to 1911 

 increased five-fold. Its per capita consumption was in 1911 three times 

 what it had been sixty years before. 



It is not necessary for us to become a cement using nation. It is not 

 necessary for us to close our wood using plants. It is not necessary for 

 the farmers and other consumers to use other materials when they prefer 

 wood as a better and more convenient material for many purposes. It is 

 not necessary for our nation to be deprived of a material that in the war 

 proved to be an absolute necessity for a multitude of uses. For we have 

 enough land for forest production that is of little or no value for anything 

 else, and will not be used for anything else. Some have estimated that 

 we have fifty to one hundred million acres of such lands that already 



