The Nation's Part in Our Forest Policy 



By W. B. Greeley, Forester, U. S. Forest Service. 



Delivered at Meeting of State Forestry Officials, 

 Harrisburg, Pa., December 8, 1920. 



There is little argument among thoughtful men 

 that provision for a continuous and sufficient supply 

 of timber in the United States is one of the real 

 economic problems which must be worked out by the 

 present generation. Nor can there be much debate 

 that sufficient timber for the future can be assured 

 only by general reforestation of logged-off land. 

 Three-fourths of our primeval forests are gone ; and 

 the United States, like the nations of the Old World 

 before it, must pass from the mining of virgin forests 

 to the harvesting of grown timber crops. "We are 

 a people of timber users and, by one means or an- 

 other, we must become a people of timber growers. 



Never before in the history of the United States 

 has the need for reforestation been so widely recog- 

 nized. It has been brought home to many American 

 manufacturers by real shortages, not merely fluctua- 

 tions of the market, in the valuable woods essential 

 to their industries. It has been brought home to the 

 newspaper publishers of the country through the 

 shortage and high cost of print paper. It has been 

 brought home, perhaps most acutely of all, to the 

 million or more average citizens who want to build 

 their own homes but have been unable to afford it. 

 It has been brought home, no less, to forest industries 



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