s;i\v into ;i board. The desolation in the hardwood forests of the South 

 is as unspeakable as in the j)ine forests of the North. Stave-makers, 

 tie cutters, vehicle and machinery makers, have ripped open the hard- 

 wood regions of Tennessee. Mississippi, and Arkansas, until the end 

 is as close there as it is in the vaster pine woods. 



On the Pacific coast we used not long ago only the finest of redwood, 

 gradually then the Douglas fir or spruce. Xow we cut in the West 

 hemlock, cedar, lodge-pole pine, anything that will hold a saw blade. 

 For a long time we thought these great Western stores exhaustless. just 

 as not long ago we thought the forests of Michigan and Wisconsin 

 exhaust less, where now remains in great part only a horrible wilder- 

 ness. 



All the time poorer speeies and grades of timber are employed all 

 over America. Hast and West. All the time the "estimates" of our 

 remaining timber increase. Hut all the time the standing trees them- 

 selves decrease; all the time the fires rage; all the time the waste goes 

 on. immense logs, the butts of giant trees, being left in the woods to 

 rot because it does not pay to get them out of the woods "at the pres- 

 ent price of lumber." All the time the loss to the people of America 

 goes on. and the price to the people of America goes up; and all the 

 time the people of America either do not know or do not care. 



We ought to care, and if we know the facts no doubt we should care. 

 What. then, are some of the facts.' Plenty of facts, and very obvious 

 ones, lie at hand for any one interested in any sort of building or 

 manufacture requiring the use of lumber. AVhat was .^S or .^10 is now 

 worth $'2~t to -t-'i*' a thousand. Ordinary clear building and finishing 

 lumber costs from .^>0 to .^llM a thousand. The price of all lumber has 

 in five years ris< n over fifty per cent. We use lumber now that twenty 

 years ago would have been rejected with scorn by any builder. Yet 

 prices are going up. and still up: and the lumbermen wish these prices 

 '"protected." and ask' that the Sherman law be revoked. In spite of 

 these facts, the professional optimist in lumber attempts to soothe us 

 with the assurance that there is plenty of timber "farther west": that 

 it will last "indefinitely" at the "present rate." 



Hut the lumberman bases all his timber estimates on the present rate 

 of culling and on the present rate of demand. True, no one can 

 prophesy or estimate the accelerated, the cumulative demand of the 

 future. Decade after decade of our past has shown us that we could 

 not dream big enough to cover the actual figures of this demand. Yet 

 this iinest i mat ed factor is the element of danger for the future. 



The lumberman does not figure on the million or more of immigrants 

 we take in each year to house, not to mention an occasional American 

 native born. Worst and most absurd of all. he figures on the timber 

 supply lasting on the basis of its all being used. Yet of all the limber 

 now left standing in America, to represent our entire future supply. 

 this lumberman, judged by his record, will use less than one half. The 

 oilier half will never be taken out of the woods at all. Three Fourths 

 of that half may never even be cut. but mav be set on fire and burned 

 as it stands. .Much as we had in forest resources in the past, we never 

 could afford to have lumbering operations destroy as much as they 

 sawed. I>u1 that is what they did. What should be our attitude today 



54 



