CHAPTER I 

 WOOD AXD HUMAX PROGRESS 



Knowledge is the torch of human progress. It throws its hght 

 forward and hfts each generation upward in tlie scale of civilization 

 in proportion as that generation accepts its standards. In the story 

 of creation, knowledge is symbolized by a tree. Down through the 

 intervening ages man's use of wood in attaining new heights of knowl- 

 edge has been one of the most important factors in the advance of 

 civilization. 



Primitive man, w^e are told, was dominated by the forest. But as 

 his crude imagination slowly awakened to the arts of life, he finally 

 succeeded in reversing the order of his environment by making the 

 forests more and more serve his material needs. And in conquering 

 the forests, he built up the material structure of his own civilization; 

 he stimulated his latent consciousness of the power of civilization; he 

 lifted himself from a life of savage and nomadic wandering to the 

 social and industrial niodernism of today. 



History is rich in evidence of the achievement of human progress 

 through knowledge derived from wood. Man, it is held, was rescued 

 from a state of savagery primarily by two discoveries : the art of kind- 

 ling fire at his will and the use of the bow and arrow, which made him 

 master of his food supply and provided him with clothing. Ages 

 later, the discovery of iron, with which he could fashion wood more 

 and more to serve his needs, appears to have been the step from l)ar- 

 barism to the first stages of civilization. 



It would be difficult to express proper appreciation of wood as a 

 material stimulus to learning and the arts of living. Its ready adapt- 

 ability, we can well believe, made it the sculptor's clay by which man 

 tested and develo])ed his first imaginative theories and laid the primi- 

 tive foundation of much present day science. The origin of the prin- 

 ciple of the wheel, Avhich is an essential part of almost every machine 

 or mechanical convevance of our own age, is lost in antiquity, as evi- 



