FORESTRY AND THE PAPER INDUSTRY 



207 



plants necessarily will retard the westward expansion or 

 migration of this industry; but unquestionably it should 

 afford one means of increasing the production of paper 

 to keep pace with current demands. 



From the standpoint of geographical location and 

 transportation to the bulk of the paper users in the Central 

 and Eastern States, the western paper woods fall into 

 two broad belts. The first is available to tidewater ship- 

 ments from the Pacific Coast, lying principally on the 

 west slope of the Cascade Mountains in Oregon and Wash- 

 ington, including vast areas tributary to Puget Sound, 

 and running up along the seaboard in southeasterly Alaska. 

 There are 70 billion feet of spruce and hemlock in the 

 National Forests of Alaska alone. In many respects, its 

 condition as to abundant forests of paper-making woods, 

 water power, and direct tidewater transportation dupli- 

 cate those of Norway, the leading country of the world 

 in its paper industry. It is a safe prediction that in the 



with proper development, should supply both the paper 

 required for local consumption and that necessary to re- 

 place the diminishing supplies of the Lake States for the 

 needs of the Middle West. 



News-Print Paper From New Varieties of Wood 

 Extending the' supply of raw materials by determin- 

 ing the paper-making qualities of new woods is an impor- 

 tant factor in the problem. Tests conducted by the For- 

 est Products Laboratory of the Department of Agricul- 



SULPHUR BURNERS 



These burners are used in the acid plants of the sulphite or chemical pulp mills 

 or generating the sulphur gases, which are combined with milk of lime for the 

 manufacture of liquor, used in combination with steam pressure, for reducing 

 the wood, which is in chip form, to chemical fiber. 



last analysis the value of Alaska to the United States as 

 a source of paper will be found to exceed the value of any 

 other of her enormous resources, coal, minerals, or fisheries. 

 The second timber belt of western paper woods ex- 

 tends through the northern Rocky Mountains from the 

 Canadian line into Colorado and Utah. This belt, shut 

 off from water transportation, can hardly be considered 

 a practical source of supply of paper for the Eastern 

 States ; but is a logical storehouse of raw materials for the 

 paper requirements of the Mississippi Valley. The Rocky 

 Mountains contain a number of excellent paper woods and, 



NORTH CLEAR CREEK FALLS 

 The natural fall shown in the picture was included in a power project for which 

 application has been made by F. W. Bosco, Rio Grande National Forest, Colo- 

 rado. This indicates character of water powers on National Forests. 



ture have demonstrated the suitability for various grades 

 of paper of no less than twelve new or little used woods,, 

 including Englemann spruce, lodge pole pine, white fir, 

 and other cheap and abundant coniferous woods of the 

 Western States. At least ten of these woods were proved 

 good enough for news print, and papers made from some 

 of them actually were used in editions of the New York 

 Herald and St. Louis Republic. 



Almost equal in importance to the timber of the 

 Pacific Coast belt and the Rocky Mountain belt are the 

 publicly owned water powers, a second primary essential 

 of the paper industry. Undeveloped power is there in 

 sufficient quantity and available for exploitation and use- 

 under reasonable measures of Government control. This 

 is equally true with respect to coal, almost as important 

 in paper manufacture as pulpwood itself. Both in Alaska 

 and in the Rocky Mountain region the Federal Govern- 



