24 ECONOMICS OF FORESTRY. 



stored in wooden sheds. Ten million telegraph 

 poles are needed to keep up communication be- 

 tween distant markets. 



The forest furnishes the cooperage to market 

 our vintage, to store our flour and fruit. The 

 forest furnishes the plough handle and harrow 

 frame to cultivate, the threshing machine and 

 windmill to prepare the crops, the cart to bring 

 them to market, the bottoms in which they cross 

 the ocean to foreign marts, and even the tar and 

 pitch needed to keep the cargo safe. While iron 

 ships have largely replaced the wooden bottoms in 

 ocean travel, our coastwise and inland shipping, 

 which requires a tonnage twice as large as the 

 transatlantic trade, is carried mostly in wooden 

 ships.^ We are rocked in wooden cradles, play 

 with wooden toys, sit on wooden chairs and benches, 

 eat from wooden tables, use wooden desks, chests, 

 trunks, are entertained by music from wooden in- 

 struments, enlightened by information printed on 

 wooden paper with black ink made from wood, and 

 even eat our salads seasoned with vinegar made 

 from wood. 



1 According to the report of the Commissioner of Navigation, 

 there were in the merchant marine of the United States in the year 

 1900, 2,507,042 tons of sailing vessels, practically all of wood, and 

 2,657,797 tons of steam vessels, of which, undoubtedly, a large 

 part was in wooden hulls, besides over 4,000,000 tons unrigged 

 vessels, wooden barges, etc., permitting the above estimate. During 

 the year 1900, 1447 vessels, with a tonnage of 393,790, were built, 

 of which only half the tonnage was of iron and steel. 



