4 AGRICULTURAL AND MECHANICAL COLLEGE OF TEXAS. 



productive, not destructive, in the sense of supplying the needs of man. 

 It is one of the three great manufacturing industries of Texas, employ- 

 ing over 25,000 persons and producing a value in manufactured products 

 of $32.000,000 a year, two-thirds of which goes to wage earners. It 

 consists of 800 separate establishments and each year turns into the 

 channels of commerce two billion feet of lumber, laths and shingles, 

 in addition to millions of railroad ties and cords of wood, enormous 

 quantities of telegraph and telephone poles, fence posts, cooperage stock 

 and a wide variety of other products. It is impossible to measure the 

 extent of these products in terms which one may easily understand. 

 Commercial timber is produced in a large scale in only 12 out of 168 

 million acres in the State. To meet the demand, conservative estimates 

 by the government* indicate that there is a supply of standing timber 

 within the timber belt of Eastern Texas of about sixty-six billion feet, 

 two-thirds of which is yellow pine. There are some large holdings 

 where lumbering operations have not yet begun and which will require 

 the building of additional large mills, but with a few exceptions the 

 big manufacturing plants in operation today will be abandoned in ten 

 to twenty-five years. There is no storehouse of timber beyond the next 

 few decades at the most. To satisfy the demands of a greatly increas- 

 ing population in the future the supply of timber must come from new 

 growth within the State or from outside the State, chiefly from the 

 Pacific northwest, which now contains one-half of all the remaining 

 timber of the United States. The consumer in Texas will have to 

 pay a greatly increased price for his lumber with the freight. Even 

 the home-grown timber of the future will have a much higher value than 

 at present. 



Let us look ahead to this timber supply question with a view to safe- 

 guarding our own local needs and also growing timber to sell outside 

 the State. The passing of the lumber manufacturing business as it is 

 known today in East Texas is inevitable. One would not even wish 

 to continue it on such a gigantic scale. The lumber industry of the 

 future will be carried on by portable and combination mills and small, 

 permanent establishments which. will pay good prices for the products 

 of farmers' woodlands, furnish labor to farmers and their teams when 

 not otherwise 'engaged, and in general promote agricultural prosperity 

 rather than retard it, which is now frequently the case. Texas can 

 produce all the timber it will require for all time within its present 

 forest regions by growing new forests on the lands which are likely to 

 remain unimproved. The fear is that these new forests will not be 

 started soon enough. 



Safeguarding the future timber supply of our State is not only a 

 problem of wide significance but the growing of young timber is a 

 matter of good business sense and judgment. Owners should encourage 

 young forests on their cut-over, waste and idle lands. In 1899 the 

 value of forest products from the farms of Texas amounted to three 



*The Lumber Industry, Part T. Standing Timber, U. S. Dept. of Commerce 

 and Labor, Washington/ D. C. 1913. 



