92 OUR VANISHING FORESTS 



acres, has been so badly treated that the land now 

 lies absolutely denuded and idle. And the destruc- 

 tion goes on. The best estimate of the growth of 

 all our remaining forests shows an increment of 6 

 billion cubic feet of wood a year, while we cut in 

 a single year about 24 billion cubic feet, and allow 

 forest fires, insects, etc., to destroy nearly 2 billion 

 cubic feet more. If this rate of destruction is main- 

 tained it is safe to estimate that within the lifetime 

 of a child born today our present timber resources 

 will have practically vanished. 



Who is responsible for this condition? Is it the 

 lumbermen? Indirectly, yes, but fundamentally, no. 

 The lumbermen have been repeatedly assured that 

 our forests were inexhaustible. When they had suc- 

 cessively finished cutting in New England, Pennsyl- 

 vania, New York, and Michigan, they were told to 

 "Go south, go west; there you will find timber 

 enough to last for untold generations." They did 

 so. So vast did those forests appear that their ex- 

 haustion seemed impossible. Today we are told 

 that at the ordinary rate of consumption the great 

 pineries of Mississippi and Louisiana cannot last 

 over fifteen years, while even the western forests 

 are rapidly disappearing. It was all a colossal mis- 

 take based purely upon ignorance. In terms of bil- 

 lions the mind fails to function, and a few years ago 



