THE THRONE OF KING COAL 41 



oughly dried are not undesirable. If firewood is in 

 the least green a large proportion of the heat is used 

 up in driving out the moisture and the result is so 

 poor that it is generally best to buy the season's 

 supply a year in advance and stack it in a dry place. 

 Any kind of wood will burn when dry, but some 

 char so rapidly that they tend to extinguish their 

 own blaze. This last is particularly true of Cali- 

 fornia redwood, and the consequent low fire hazard 

 has been urged by lumber manufacturers in favor of 

 using redwood in home construction. 



The point to be remembered is that fuel-wood is 

 not rightly a forest product but a forest by-product, 

 and a large portion of the trees now used for fuel 

 ought to be grouped into units for producing lum- 

 ber, poles, pulpwood, etc. Our gradual appreciation 

 of the need for forest growing foreshadows just 

 such a development, as the thinning out of young 

 and injured trees under proper forest practice, 

 combined with the ordinary waste from wood-using 

 industries, would furnish fuel-wood more than suf- 

 ficient for all our needs. If the price of lumber and 

 other wood products is to be kept at a minimum 

 those thinnings and waste pieces must be sold. If 

 we abandon the use of wood fuel in favor of coal 

 and electricity, we must pay just so much more for 

 the primary wood products, or in other words, just 

 so much tribute to "King Coal." 



