THE TIMBER SUPPLY AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT 



BY RO HEADLEY 



11HE average citizen remembers that there was a 

 good deal said about conservation a few years ago, 

 and he has a hazy idea that there are National 

 Forests somewhere in the West. He sees an occasional 

 magazine article describing recreational features of the 

 National Forests, and occasionally reads about forest 

 fires being fought. These impressions leave Mr. Average 

 Citizen with the idea that the timber supply of the coun- 

 try has been pretty well provided for. 



He is more willing to let it go at that because it has 

 always been something of an effort for him to whip his 

 mind into a state of real concern over the threatened 

 timber shortage about which the foresters have always 

 talked so much. Try as he would, he could never feel 

 sure that the approaching timber shortage meant much 

 to him personally, or that it laid on him any particular 

 obligation for action. 



Why is it that Mr. Average Citizen takes this rather 

 complaisant attitude in the face of the steady flow of 

 information and argument designed to make clear to 

 the general public the oncoming national timber short- 

 age, which is so well known to lumbermen and foresters ? 



As a nation we have just emerged from the period 

 when timber was a good deal of a nuisance an obstacle 

 in the road to progress and prosperity for the settler, 

 the road builder, and the stock grower. It has been 

 but a few years since, in certain parts of the country, 

 trees were still killed by girdling in order that virgin 

 timber land might be turned into cultivated fields. Log 

 rollings, at which beautiful, straight, clean logs were 

 heaped in giant piles and burned, have been familiar 

 sights to men not yet old. In the good old days when 

 walnut, or pine, or oak was cut and burned at a great 

 expediture of labor in order that the land might be 

 cleared and farmed, there was no market for the timber 

 on the land, even though it was composed of the choicest 

 species and grades. The only course left open to the 

 aggressive settler was to cut and burn and destroy. 



After thinking for generations that timber exists in 

 inexhaustible quantities and must often be destroyed in 

 order that agriculture and home building may go on, the 

 average man has been asked to revolutionize his point 

 of view and think of timber as a natural resource which 

 is rapidly vanishing to the great detriment of our indi- 

 vidual and national prosperity and comfort. He simply 

 has to have time for this reconstruction of opinion. He 

 has not, as yet, quite recognized that we have completed 

 the transition from the days of too much timber to the 

 days of too little timber. 



It is less than twenty years ago that shrewd, hard- 

 headed lumbermen, who had actually seen the suc- 

 cessive exhaustion of timber supply of the western and 

 middle western states, refused an opportunity to invest 

 in the splendid stands of western white pine in Idaho. 

 Their reason was that the present and future lumber 



markets were too far distant to make the manufacture 

 in quantity of this lumber a profitable enterprise. These 

 men had seen the lumber industry migrate from Maine 

 to Pennsylvania, thence to Michigan and Wisconsin, and 

 they knew it would be only a matter of time until the 

 corporations then doing a flourishing business in Min- 

 nesota would be forced to seek fresh stands of virgin 

 timber; but even with the advantage of all this signifi- 

 cant experience they could not believe that the lumber 

 supply lying east of the plains region would ever fall 

 far enough short of the demand to make it possible for 

 Idaho lumber, with its handicap of high freight charges, 

 to compete seriously for the markets of the west and 

 middle west. 



Where majestic forests of western white pine stood 

 when these lumbermen rejected what later proved to be 

 a golden business opportunity is now to be found an 

 increasing area of blackened waste left in the rear of 

 lumbering operations that have prospered by shipping 

 to those identical markets east of the Rockies. Idaho 

 timber was required to meet the growing demand for 

 lumber in the middle west and east, and its manufacture 

 and export has given rise to a flourishing lumber industry. 



If shrewd lumbermen with the advantage of life-long 

 familiarity with the process of progressive timber deple- 

 tion guessed so far wrong on the speed with which 

 timber then inaccessible would be reached in the devas- 

 tating march of the lumber industry from the east to 

 the west, it is little wonder that the average man, with 

 his lack of expert information, should fail to recognize 

 that the days of plenty of timber have passed and the 

 days of shortage are upon us. 



The tragedy of the situation is, that by the time public 

 opinion becomes fully aware of the fact of timber deple- 

 tion, many golden opportunities to prevent depletion by 

 easy and natural means will have been lost. 



Michigan is beginning to realize the meaning of the 

 ten million acres in that state that have been made a 

 desert by unwise lumbering and fire, and many people 

 are convinced at last that these wastes can not be made 

 into farms; they recognize that the humus has been 

 burned out of the soil and that only the burned sand is 

 left. They recognize what an asset these millions of 

 acres might now be to the state if they had been given 

 proper care, but it is too late; such seed trees as were 

 left after the land had been logged have gone down be- 

 fore repeated fires; the soil fertility has been terribly 

 wasted even for tree growth, which is not as exacting 

 as cultivated crops. In many localities tree growth can 

 only be restored by costly artificial planting, and because 

 of the carelessness with fire which has become so 

 habitual, artificial planting is a hazardous venture too 

 hazardous for private owners who are unwilling to plant 

 a crop which for decades must run the gauntlet of fire in 

 (Continued on page 116) 



