Canadian Forestry Magazine, August-Septeinber. ip20. 



411 



Short a Million Houses 

 Consider for a moment our situation 

 to-day as a nation of wood users. The 

 United States at this moment is short at 

 least one million homes. In comparison 

 with the need, new dwellings are being; 

 constructed at a snail's pace because of 

 the high cost of lumber, with other build- 

 ing materials, and of labor. From the 

 shortage of homes arise exorbitant rents, 

 •crowded living conditions, and lowered 

 standards of comfort and family life. 

 The average farm in the United States 

 needs about two thousand board feet of 

 lumber every year for new buildings and 

 improvements. Because the average 

 farmer can not obtain lumber at prices 

 within his reach, farm development is 

 handicapped and the efficiency of agri- 

 culture suffers. This is a factor of no 

 slight importance in our vital problem of 

 food supply and living costs. 



We need six and one-quarter million 

 cords of wood a year to make our news- 

 papers, magazines, books, pasteboard 

 boxes, and other products manufactured 

 from wood pulp. We are meeting this 

 need at present only by importing a thir 1 

 of our paper or paper-making materials 

 from Canada. We require from one 

 hundred twenty-five milHon railroad tie-- 

 each year to keep up and extend our 

 railroad lines, aside from enormous 

 quantities of timber used in other forms 

 for railroad construction and the build- 

 ing of cars. We have to have at least 

 six billion feet of timber yearly for 

 boxes, crates and barrels, a requirement 

 which is steadily increasing. In several 

 higldy developed agricultural regions an 

 assured supply of containers for ship- 

 ping farm products to market has be- 

 come a serious problem in itself. 



A group of our important manu- 

 facturers, the makers of wood veneers, 

 handles, vehicles, furniture, and agri- 

 cultural ini)ilemonls consume one and 

 one-half l)illion feet of timber yearly. It 

 is upon this group, perhaps, that the 

 growing shortage of timber falls most 

 lieavily, since they require largely high 

 grade hardwoods and oiher timber which 

 tlie virgin forests of the United Slates 

 furnislied so knishlw Imi w hii-h it is now- 

 becoming more and more difficult to tind 

 in sufficient quantities. 



A ]Vood-iising People 



All told, we demand of our forests 

 about fifty-six billion feet of timber 

 \earlv. aside from well over one hun- 

 dred million cords of small material for 

 fuel and various chemical products. 

 There is nothing comparable to this en- 

 ormous use of wood in the histors' of the 

 world. We are pre-eminently a wood- 

 using nation. It is wood that has de- 

 veloped our farm lands, that has largely 

 built and equipped our railroads, and 

 that supports many of our most valuable 

 and distinctive manufacturing industries. 

 We use from two to four times as much 

 wood for every member of our popu- 

 lation as the most highly developed 

 countries of Europe. The abundance 

 and general distribution of our native 

 forests have had a tremendous part in 

 the domestic and industrial development 

 of the United States and in its bid for 

 supremacy. We can not face the future 

 without a sober and intelligent considera- 

 tion of that fact. 



The Wake of Devastation 



The original forests of the United 

 'States are supposed to have covered eisfht 

 l.undred twentv-two million acres. Over 

 two-thirds of this area has been culled, 

 cut-over, or burnt. There are left to- 

 day about four hundred sixty-three mil- 

 lion acres of forest and cut-over land of 

 all sorts, which contains about two thou- 

 sand two hundred and fourteen billion 

 feet of timber of merchantable sizes. 

 Three-fifths of tlie timber originally in 

 the United States is gone. 



All told we are taking about four 

 times the amount of wood out of our 

 forests every year which we are grow- 

 ing in them. We are cutting more of 

 everv class of timber than we are grow- 

 ing. We arc even using up the trees 

 too small for the sawmill, but upon which 

 our future lumber supplv depends three 

 and one-half times as fast as they are 

 being produced. 



Of still greater significance is the fact 

 that the timber left is not in the right 

 l^lace. The crux of timber depletion is 

 the exhaustion, or partial exhaustion, of 

 the forests most available to the great 

 bulk of our poiMilation. T.ess 



