pletion of the principal forest areas east of the Great 

 Plains. 



(2) That the depletion of timber is not the sole 

 cause of the recent high prices of forest products, but 

 it is an important contributing cause whose effects 

 will increase steadily as depletion continues. 



(3) That the fundamental problem is to increase 

 the production of timber by stopping forest devasta- 

 tion. 



The virgin forests of the United States covered 822 

 million acres. They are now shrunk to one-sixth of 

 that area. All classes of forest land, including culled, 

 burned, and cut-over areas, now aggregate 463 million 

 acres, or a little more than one-half of our original 

 forests. Of the forest land remaining and not utiliz- 

 ed for farming or any other purpose, approximately 

 81 million acres have been so severely cut and burn- 

 ed as to become unproductive waste. This area is 

 equivalent to the combined forests of Germany, Den- 

 mark, Holland, Belgium, France. Switzerland, Spain 

 ind Portugal. Upon an enormous additional area 

 the growth of timber is so small in amount or of such 

 inferior character that its economic value is negligible. 



The merchantable new timber remaining in the 

 United States is estimated roughly at 2,215 billion 

 board feet, something less than three-fourths of which 

 is virgin stumpage, The rest is second growth of 

 relatively inferior quality. About one-half of the 

 timber left is in the three Pacific Coast States, and 

 over 61 per cent is west of the Great Plains. A little 

 over one-fifth of the timber left in the country, o| 



8 



