WEST PERSIA THE WOOD-FAMINE COUNTRY 



583 



otherwise it would melt and ruin 

 the roof. And every year, or at 

 least once in two years, the roof 

 has to be gone over, perhaps re- 

 surfaced and pounded. How much 

 better it would be and how much 

 safer and with how much of a 

 saving in work every year, if the 

 mountain cedar one or two scat- 

 tered specimens of which the 

 writer found up in th"e wilder por- 

 tions of the country were syste- 

 matically grown for shingle stock. 

 This could be done and the hous- 

 ing conditions of the whole coun- 

 try could be revolutionized. And 

 what a short-sighted policy on the 

 part of the country or of any 

 country for that matter to de- 

 stroy the forests and then have to 

 adopt some such clumsy, inefficient 

 and dangerous method to use as a 

 substitute for the wooden articles. 

 Yet that is just what America is 

 doing today, just as rapidly as it 

 very well can be done. 



The presence of wood famine is 

 noticeable in the furnishing of the 

 houses as well as in the houses 

 themselves. For instance the 

 floors are never of wood, not sel- 

 dom, but never. In the poor houses 

 the floor is just mud and in the 

 better houses rough flat brick or a 

 poor sort of mixture of mud, clay 

 and lime, called "native cement" 

 takes its place. The result is that 

 the floors are cold, hard and damp. 

 The doors are usually made of 

 poplar lumber which has been bad- 

 ly sawn and badly seasoned. All 

 of the sawing is done by hand in 

 "pit saws" where one man stands 

 on top of the log and one man 

 stands in a pit underneath it, as 

 they saw the planks out of the tim- 

 ber. The result is that the doors are 

 apt to warp, check and crack so 

 that in a short time seams open 

 up and the door is spoiled. As 

 for the furniture fully 99/100 of 

 the population never sleep in any 

 kind of a bedstead during their 

 lives. Instead, rugs are spread 

 on the floor and then with thin 

 mattresses and wool quilts and pil- 

 lows the bed is made up. In fact 

 it is only in the large cities and in 

 the homes of the very wealthy 

 people and among those few who 

 have been out of the country and 



PERSIAN INDUSTRIES 



Upper A Persian flour mill. Note the tree trunk set in the pile of staves to the 



right. This is hollow and carries the water down to the water wheel bejow. 

 Middle Ripsawing poplar lumber in a Per sian carpentershop. 



Lower A Persian rug loom. The boys si ng as they work. Note the wooden thread 



winder in the right background. 



