58 



be substituted for wood. But such a determination would itself be only 

 provisional. Lacking even this information perhaps the most trustworthy 

 evidence is to be found in the experience of other nations at the same rela- 

 tive stage in industrial development as we are now experiencing in the 

 United States. 



It is undeniable that this country is today, and heretofore always has 

 been, using up its forests more rapidly than they have been replaced by 

 regrowth. When timber was plentiful and cheap, and industrial devel- 

 opment in comparative infancy, wood was of course, freely used. In many 

 parts of the United States before the war the average annual consump- 

 tion per person of lumber and wood products, not including firewood, was 

 equivalent to more than two thousand five hundred board feet. In the 

 state of Montana an agricultural and mining community it was about one 

 thousand two hundred fifty feet; in Oregon, seven hundred twenty feet; 

 but in Pennsylvania and New York, industrial states, only three hundred 

 feet and two hundred feet respectively. In the United States as a whole 

 the consumption of lumber per person is now approximately three hundred 

 twenty feet, as against more than five hundred feet less than fifteen 

 years ago and one hundred feet in England, ninety feet in France and one 

 hundred fifty feet in Germany immediately prior to the outbreak of the war. 



Industrial evolution has, in the history of nations, been accompanied 

 by a decline in the wood-using customs of the people. While Americans 

 will, of course, desire for this nation, always a larger inheritance of na- 

 tional resources than other less favored peoples have possessed, it is likely 

 that the same drama of changing lumber requirements will be enacted here. 

 It is improbable that the annual production of lumber in this country will 

 for any substantial period, if ever again, exceed forty billion feet. Last 

 year it was less than thirty-two billion feet. Ten years ago it was forty- 

 five billion feet. Increases in population will probably be offset by recip- 

 rocal changes in the wood-using customs of the people. 



Exports of lumber are not likely to absorb the volume of timber which 

 many glittering reports from abroad may have indicated. The export 

 trade will undoubtedly increase and it should. But the nations in the 

 greatest need of materials for construction are so thoroughly committed, 

 through tradition and sentiment, to the use of other materials such as 

 brick and tile and stone, that the predicted avalanche of demand for 

 American lumber is in doubt. 



Were a permanent forestation enterprise established in this country 

 on the basis, for example, of the system used successfully in Sweden, on 

 a one hundred year period of rotation, a supply of merchantable standing 

 timber of two trillion feet with a proper distribution of age classes, would 

 probably be adequate reasonably to meet the needs which may be fore- 

 casted. We have today according to present standards of estimate, nearly 

 three trillion feet of merchantable timber most of which is relatively ma- 

 ture. Roughly speaking therefore there is a "slack" of nearly one trillion 

 feet. Supplemented by probable new growth of not less than three-quarters 

 of a trillion more, this supply should last approximately fifty years. Dur- 

 ing this period provision will have been made for making the remaining 

 two trillion or its equivalent, self -perpetuating, or else "timber shortage" 



