STORY OF OUR NATIONAL FOREST 85 



forestation, and 126,875 square miles which have 

 been so slashed, burnt, reburnt, and eroded as to be 

 wastes probably incapable of future usefulness. 



There remains, therefore, only 215,875 square 

 miles of virgin forest out\of 1,284,590 square miles 

 which the early colonists found here. To live off the 

 greater area, we then had a few thousand people 

 whose needs were little more than those of bare ex- 

 istence. To live off its remainder, we now have 

 more than a hundred and twelve millions whose com- 

 plicated modern requirements are many times per 

 capita greater than those of our forefathers. Ac- 

 cording to Richard H. D. Boerker, timber consump- 

 tion in France amounts to twenty-five cubic feet per 

 capita of population, in Germany to forty cubic feet 

 per capita, in the United States two hundred and 

 fifty cubic feet per capita. But we are not personally 

 so extravagant as the comparison makes us appear, 

 only unbelievably negligent. Half of this expendi- 

 ture is destruction. Forest fires have devoured an- 

 nually more timber than all uses combined. 



The story of the ignorant, careless, almost blithe- 

 some dissipation of the grandest heritage of forest, 

 no doubt, of any land on earth is one of the world's 

 tragedies. We can better understand it of Asia and 

 southern Europe in civilization's childhood than of 

 stalwart, brainy America during the last hundred 

 years. Much of the forest, of course, had to give 

 place to the farms, villages and cities of a swiftly 

 growing nation. In the handling of the remainder, 



