GIFFORD PINCHOT ON THE SNELL BILL 



245 



and its industry on a basis of so lavish a use of wood as 

 this country of ours. Our whole standard of living, our 

 whole business and commercial organization, is based on 

 the use of about 300 board feet per capita, where the 

 nations of Europe use only half as much. We are now 

 facing the absolute certainty, within a comparatively small 

 number of years, of having to reduce that consumption 

 of timber ; and timber is the most universal of all ma- 

 terials and has more to do with the standard of living, 

 in my judgment, than any of the other basic materials. 

 We are facing the necessity of having to reduce that to 

 one-half or perhaps to one-third. That is going to mean 

 1 complete overturning of our methods of agriculture and 

 industry. * 



"You understand that half of all the wood used in the 

 United States is used on the farms. It takes one-half of 

 , our total consumption of timber to grow our food. Then, 

 after that food has been grown, it has got to be shipped 

 by rail. You can not ship a pound of meat without the 

 help of the forest. You can not load a box car, you can 

 not get out a railroad tie, you can not mine a ton of coal 

 or a pound of iron without the forest. You can notprovide 

 a suit of clothes without the forest, or eat a meal without 

 the forest. The whole thing is interwoven in our national 

 life to a point that makes the use of wood in some sense 

 the critical thing in establishing our costs of living and 

 our commercial and individual welfare. It is the key to 

 our individual safety and comfort and prosperity. 



"Now, that being true, we are coming as a Nation right 

 square up against the place where our own supplies will 

 be exhausted, and very completely exhausted, and we are 

 facing a situation where we can not get what we have 

 not at home anywhere else in the world. I do not think 

 the people generally have come to realize what the thing 

 means. All the great civilized nations of the world, with 

 three or four exceptions, are timber-importing nations. 

 We are not yet, but as individual Commonwealths we are 

 in an overwhelming degree two to one. The nations of 

 Europe are far more so than the States of the American 

 Union. 



"All the big nations of Europe, with the exception of 

 Russia, Sweden, and Norway, and Finland, a small 

 nation, part of Rumania the recent small Governments 

 are so mixed up that I can not name them but with the 

 excejrtion of those four or five nations all the nations of 

 Europe are unab'.e to supply the needs of their own peo- 

 ple.. Germany has been a timber-importing nation since 

 1870. France, England, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, 

 Holland, Belgium, and all the rest of them are obliged 

 to go to the few parts of the world that have got timber 

 yet and bring it in. In other words, there is nothing 

 we can expect from Europe when our pail goes dry. As 

 to the Canadians, if we got every stick they have it would 

 only keep this Nation going about twenty years. 



"The Canadians are not going to help us out much. 

 They have made that perfertly clear, and, as I said, if 

 we took everything they have got, it would be gone in 20 

 years. Mexico is a timber-importing country right now. 

 Mexico imports about one-half the wood it uses, al- 

 though it has considerable areas of tropical wood and a 



great deal of undeveloped timber, and yet from the gi- 

 gantic necessities we have of half tlie sawed luriiber of 

 the whole earth, the Mexican supply is not large. Every 

 nation in South America, so far as I know, is a timber- 

 producing nation. Brazil imports, if my memory serves 

 me rightly, about 70 per cent ; the Argentine, I think, 

 about the same ; and all of them are timber-importing na- 

 tions. Of course, there is a vast body of hardwood in the 

 Amazon valley, but it is not the kind of timber we use ; 

 and as you follow tliis matter around the world you get 

 the same result. Australia is a timber-importing region. 



The United States is in this exact situation, and I think 

 this statement can not be successfully controverted, we 

 are facing a time in the very near future when this 

 absolute necessity of life, as we have it now, is going 

 to be short and when we cannot get it outside of our own 

 boundaries except at excessive prices, and not very much 

 of it at that. In other words, I think it is a fair thing 

 to say that the biggest economic question before this Na- 

 tion, far and away, is this matter of where we are go- 

 ing to get the lumber, without which we can not grow 

 crops or manufacture goods or ship goods or do business. 

 I wanted to present that as strongly as I could in this 

 statement to the committee, because the thing is just be- 

 ginning to be understood. I want to make the point, too, 

 that this timber question is vastly more important to the 

 States and to the regions that have not got any timber 

 than it is to the timbered ones. Take my State of Penn- 

 sylvania, the Pittsburgh region alone uses as much timber 

 as the whole State produces, and if it were not for the 

 timber that comes in from the outside there would be an 

 absolute collapse of industry in the State of Pennsylvania. 

 It is enormously more important to us wbat happens in 

 the forested States, than it is to the people in those States, 

 because all we can expect to get is the crumbs that fall 

 from their table. It is exactly so with the great agri- 

 cultural States. They have got to depend on the lumber 

 from elsewhere, and it is a whole lot more important to 

 them what happens to the forests in Washington, Oregon, 

 and California, that have half of the timber in the United 

 States, than it is to those States themselves, because as 

 long as there is any lumber the people in the States where 

 it is will get it. 



"Another thing, it is the man in the city who is going 

 to feel this pinch first. You grow crops on the farm, tak- 

 ing one-half the wood used in the United States, and 

 when they are grown you have got to move them. You 

 have got to transport them and you have got to pack them. 

 It takes something like one-fifth of all the sawed lumber, 

 according to a figure that has been given to me, used in 

 the United States for packages alone, and the fact of the 

 matter is that it is the people in the big centers of popula- 

 tion and in the densely populated States that are mainly 

 concerned in this ihing and whose interests have got to 

 be first considered. 



"It is not going to be the foresters who will settle 

 this question and it certainly is not going to be the lumber- 

 niicn. It is going to be the great mass of consumers among 

 the people of the United States, and the sooner they 

 can be made to understand how critical their situation is, 

 the better it is going to be for them, in my judgment." 



