148 AMEEICAN FORESTRY 



existence, when he does not burn it in order to gain a poor and temporary 

 pasture ground; because the only thing he knows is how to grow a little corn 

 of obtain a small quantity of wool or of milk. 



The problem, therfore, is not so much a matter of wasting time in the 

 consideration of more or less useless juridical questions, as to whether or no it 

 is f lie case to deal with the forest from the point of view of its secondary 

 effects, but rather to study a way of placing forest production on a sure 

 tt-clinical basis, because where a forest is naturally suitable, it will also be 

 economically satisfactory. 



ITALY'S ENORMOUS IMPORTATION 



Economic bases are not lacking when there is the desire to utilize them. 

 Timber is the product which has most increased in price on the international 

 market, having increased by 300% from 1860 up to the present day. At the 

 present time, Italy imports $45,000,000 worth of forest products every year, 

 ihat is to say, one-fourteenth of her total imports. Our most important im- 

 porter, after Austria, is the United States, for a sum of about $5,800,000. 

 The excedent of the importation upon the exportation of forest products in 

 Italy is $17,000,000, about one-seventh of the total excedent of imports upon 

 exports; and this difference is exceeded only by that of metals and mineral 

 products, especially coal. But while the latter is a deficit with which Italy 

 can do nothing directly, the former deficit is our own fault and we could re- 

 pair it, instead of paying so many millions abroad, much more than we pay 

 for wheat and flour and meat, the scarcity of which is so justly lamented. 



A few figures will be sufficient index of the deficiency and inferiority of 

 production in Italy, brought about by the negligent way in which it has 

 conducted. Whereas in countries which have a progressive sylviculture, 

 like Germany and Austria-Hungary, the annual timber product of an acre of 

 forest is a total of 45 cubic feet; in Italy this product is only 30 cubic feet. 

 A more serious side of the question, however, is that we produce only 

 cubic feet per acre per annum of the product which has really the great 

 value timber while the other producing countries nearly quintuple this 

 junt, having a timber product of 18 cubic feet. The consequence of this is 

 jur timber consumption is also abnormally restricted, being 3.7 cubic 

 inhabitant per annum, instead of 15 cubic feet, as in the industrially 

 jreeevie countries of Europe, like England, Germany and Switzerland. 

 ere is a vast difference between these figures and those of the United States, 



annual consumption per inhabitant is 160 cubic feet 



This enforced restriction in the consumption of wood, and especially of 



a s^enous impediment to many national industries. It was well, 



" < , that the Second Italian Forest Congress, held at Turin on August 



for the purpose of indicating the direction taken by the positive 



t policy affirmed m the first Congress at Bologna, gave particular atten- 



. ...n u e pro lem of forest production. This is thf foundation of ^ Italfan 



t Policy as of every other, because it alone puts this policy on a sure and 



