THE MAGIC CUP 



143 



area, the lumberman must only cut scattered trees, so 

 selected as to best encourage natural growth, the volume 

 of timber cut being dependent upon the volume annually 

 added by Nature to the wood content of the forest. 

 Obviously the greater amount of ground to be covered 

 largely increases the cost of operation; but where the 

 forest is located near the market for its products this 

 charge is readily absorbed by the saving of transportation 

 costs. When we consider that 6o per cent of the present 

 price of lumber in our eastern states represents what we 

 pay the railroads for bringing it from the Pacific Coast, 

 this is not hard to understand. The added cost of log- 

 ging by the new method is not the real stumbling block ; 

 it is the lack of forests near our chief markets for wood 

 products. We have destroyed beyond possibility of val- 

 uable reproduction by natural methods practically all the 

 foists in the eastern part of our country, and are forced 

 to start again from the very beginning and create them 

 artificially. It is not the failure of the formula, but the 

 first cost of the Cup which staggers. 



All of Europe once pursued the same destructive policy 

 and faced the same problem. France, devastated by the 

 German army, is facing it again today. How is it that 

 Continental European nations can go through all the labor 

 of planting trees and the years of waiting thereafter and 

 still find the operation profitable? Simply because the 

 people are obliged to foot the bill or have no lumber, 



THE FOREST .^T OUR DOOR 



At the gates of nearly every city and town of Continentnl. 

 Europe lie countless pleasant looking woodlands which form 

 a permanent source of supply for regular assured quantities 

 of fuel and lumber free of transportation charges. 



tury been widespread. The known vagaries of political 

 administrations may cast some doubt upon the reports 

 of tremendous success and generous profits, but when we 

 find a private corporation owning a forest and perpetually 

 maintaining it at a comfortable profit, as is also the case 

 both in France and a section of the Black Forest of 

 Germany, we must recognize that the matter is worth in- - 

 vestigating. I confess that I have never visited one of 

 these propositions without thinking of our own clubs and 

 private preserves, of the Adirondacks, the Catskills, and 

 the White Mountains, and the great potential wealth that 

 will some day be developed by their owners. 



That here in America we have plenty of land and to a 

 small degree still a few low grade trees near our great 

 wood-consuming centers, it is evident to the casual trav- 

 eller, and the fact is being better emphasized every year 

 through the reports being prepared by the newly consti- 

 tuted forest commissions of our states. But somehow 

 the magic formulas transplanted from Europe fail to 

 work out in American dollars. In the first place the 

 maintenance of a perpetual forest involves quite dififerent 

 logging methods than are common in the United States. 

 Instead of the easy, machine-like cutting of an entire 



WE MAY COME TO THIS 



This woodland of beech outside a great European city furnishes 

 both a recreation ground for the people and a permanent supply 

 of lumber and wood. 



