28 



National Resources Committee 



since the, regional lumber industry became important, 

 but in the last few years Oregon has been closing the 

 gap between these two States. Montana built up its 

 industry early, but has made no substantial increases 

 in the past 2 decades. Idaho started late, rapidly 

 overtook and passed Montana, but has shown no such 

 capacity for expansion as have Oregon and Washington; 

 the obvious e.xplanation for this will be seen by referring 

 back to figure 4. 



Figure 8 shows the percentage of the regional produc- 

 tion in each State. In relative terms, Washington and 

 Montana have been declining for the past 3 or 4 

 decades, and Idaho for the last 20 years, while Oregon 

 alone has been increasing. The basic reasons for this 

 can be found in figure 4, for it will be remembered that 

 Oregon has about half of the timber in the Region but 

 has never contributed that proportion of the production. 



Fluctuations within each State, however, are ample 

 evidence that the primary control of the regional pro- 

 duction is not the quantity of timber available. The 

 limiting factors have been, primarily, the national 

 demand for softwood lumber, the Region's comi^etitive 

 position with reference to eastern forest areas, and its 



;:jirE!5S3i? 



opportunities for export trade. It is pertinent to 

 examine in this connection the statistics of national 

 consumption. 



These are shown in figure 9, in which it will be seen 

 that the Nation's consumption of softwood lumber in- 

 creased very rapidly from the first date for which 

 statistics are available until about 1904, but that since 

 then it has declined, although with violent fluctuations 

 which coincide with periods of national prosperity and 

 depression. The Nation's consumption of pulpwood, 

 however, has increased steadily with only minor fluc- 

 tuations, and shows no indication of having yet reached 

 its peak. 



International trade in lumber has been of relatively 

 smaU importance to the United States as a whole. For 

 the past decade and a half, the total softwood export, 

 have been about 8 percent of the national production, 

 and this has been offset by imports amounting to about 

 5 percent, making the net exports only about 3 pcrcents 



The situation is radically different in the case of 

 pulpwood. This is the raw material for the paper in- 

 dustry, and comes into competition directly with 

 Canadian pidpwood, and mdirectly with imports of 



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Figure 9. 



