FORESTS, LUMBER AND CONSUMER 



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E. T. ALLEX, FORESTER OF THE WESTERN FORESTRY AND CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION AND 

 PACIFIC COAST REPRESENTATIVE OF THE AMERICAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION. 



Nothing can be more inconsistent, so 

 long as most of our forests are private- 

 ly owned, and even our public forests 

 must be privately manufactured for us, 

 than to antagonize the lumberman 

 whose help we must have by continuing 

 such ignorance of his problems that w r e 

 even treat him as an enemy. 



Let us, then, see if we can make a 

 brief glance at our tangled forest situa- 

 tion disclose a few points where prac- 

 tical attacks may lead to its eventual 



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clearing up. 



We now cut perhaps 50 billion feet 

 of lumber a year for consumption and 

 export, besides billions of lath and 

 shingles, millions of ties and cords of 

 wood, and enormous qualities of poles, 

 mine timbers, cooperage stock, distil- 

 late material and other products meas- 

 ured by standards difficult of popular 

 grasp. I hardly know how to put the 

 vastness of this quantity before you in 



any comprehensible comparison. It 

 would load a train of cars reaching 

 once and a half around the earth at 

 the equator. It would pave a roadway 

 from the earth to the moon, two inches 

 thick and over 30 feet wide. We are 

 cutting each year three times the yearly 

 growth, to say nothing of the loss from 

 fire. 



To meet this, we have perhaps 2500 

 billion feet of standing timber suitable 

 for lumber. We can only guess as to 

 future cutting rate, or loss by fire, or 

 areas which will be permitted to re- 

 forest, but 50 years is commonly given 

 as the approximate life of our visible 

 supply. Over half this supply is on 

 the Pacific Coast, less than quarter is 

 in the South, the Lake region has 3 r /2 

 per cent, and the remaining fifth is 

 scattered outside these three main for- 

 est regions. And of the entire supply, 

 less than two-fifths is in various forms 



