NEW YORK'S FORESTS AND THEIR FUTURE 



BY ARTHUR BERNARD RECKNAGEL 



FORESTER AND SECRETARY, EMPIRE STATE FOREST PRODUCTS ASSOCIATION 



THE trouble is not, as President Hadley, of Yale 

 University once remarked, that figures will lie, 

 but that liars will figure. And such liars are often 

 the best meaning people in the world. 



So it is with any attempts to predict the future of 

 the forest industries of New York State. Certain defin- 

 ite tendencies may be observed. Certain facts as to 

 available supplies and present consumption noted. From 

 these premises certain deductions may be made. But 

 like the classic syllogism: "Brutus killed Caesar" 

 Caesar is a word of two syllables therefore, "Brutus 

 killed a word of two syllables," the conclusions are apt 

 to be false unless correctly interpreted. 



The statistics of any industry even of the forest in- 

 dustry, are so dry that they may be passed over after 

 extracting only the salient facts. These are that, as a 

 wood-producing State, New York is falling further and 

 further behind her sister states. For example, in the 

 matter of lumber production, a recent government bulle- 



tin .shows that New York now ranks twenty-fifth with a 

 yearly cut of 335,000,000 board feet, out of a total cut of 

 nearly 32,000,000,000 feet in the whole country. In other 

 words, New York State produces about one per cent of 

 the total lumber cut of the country, whereas ten years 

 ago it produced 680,000,000 board feet out of a total 

 cut of nearly 45,000,000,000 feet, or about one and a half 

 per cent of the total. 



There is no need to pursue this phase of the subject. 

 The tendency is evident. Now, how about its place as 

 a timber consuming State? The Conservation Commis- 

 sion, in its report for 1919, says that "New York is the 

 greatest user of wood of any State, the total annual 

 consumption amounting to over one and three quarters 

 'billion board feet of lumber, in addition to one million 

 cords of pulpwood, over one hundred and thirty thousand 

 cords for wood alcohol and other products of distilla- 

 tion, and enormous quantities of other material for 

 railroad ties, cooperage, poles and fuel wood. It has 



PULP WOOD PILED BESIDE THE OPALESCENT RIVER IN THE HEART OF THE ADIRONDACKS 



