The Wolf at the Timber Door 



By Gifford Pinchot 



WRITING for the Saturday Evening Post, Gifford Pin- 

 chot, former chief forester of the United States gov- 

 ernment, and the one man, who, alone, is practically 

 responsible for the great strides the forestry work in the 

 United States has made in the last few years, writing on the 

 subject of "Uncle Sam's Woodlot" makes an ardent plea for 

 federal control and supervision of forests. 



The timber wolf, says Mr. Pinchot, is at the door, and un- 

 less the methods employed by the forest service are ex- 

 tended to state forests, and state and federal forest posses- 

 sions conserved scientifically, the time will come when tim- 

 ber in this country will be worth its weight in geld. 

 An extract from Mr. Pinchot's article foLows 



The Wolf at the Timber Doer. 



We use from ten to twenty times as much wood a head as 

 the nations of Europe. Our consumption of timber is not only 

 larger but more wasteful than that of any other great nation. 

 This is a sufficiently serious indictment in itself, but it is not 

 the worst. If we were living within our timber income it would 

 matter little how much we consumed. The fact is that every 

 year we cut and consume three times the amount of wood 

 that is being grown. 



Overconsumption like this cannot go on forever. When a 

 man or a family or a nation stops living on income and takes 

 to living on capital instead, the wolf is very near the door. 

 Excessive timber consumption such as ours must be fpllowed 

 by timber exhaustion as surely as night follows day. Because 

 of our overconsumption lumber is getting scarcer, poorer and 

 more expensive; stumpage is rising faster in the United 

 States than in any other country and we know with certainty 

 that a timber famine is on the way. 



A Fhortage of grain can be met in a single year by devoting 

 more land to its production, for the crop springs up and ripens 

 in one season. But a timber crop takes from one to three or 

 four generations to mature. Therefore provision against the 



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