FOREST DEPLETION THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM. 



CUMULATIVE EFFECTS OF TIMBER DEPLETION. 



From the facts presented iu this necessarily incomplete re- 

 port it is evident that the fundamental weakness in the supply 

 and cost of wood products in the United States is the cumula- 

 tive depletion of our forests. The extent and broad elfects of 

 the steady wiping out of the original forest resources of the 

 country are readily grasped. Three-fifths of our primeval for- 

 ests are gone. The limber remaining is being consumed four 

 times faster than it is being replaced. With the exhaustion of 

 several of our principal forest regions as large producers of 

 wood products, occurring successively in the Northeastern 

 States, the Alleghenies, the Lake States, and the Atlantic sea- 

 board, and the similar exhaustion of the Gulf State pineries 

 now imminent, the cost of transporting forest products to the 

 average consumer in steadily rising. Not only does the widen- 

 ing distance between the average sawmill and the average lum- 

 ber user, between the average tract of pulpwood and the aver- 

 age newspaper, impole an increasing charge for freight ; by 

 eliminating former sources of supply and competition it ac- 

 centuates the evils of abnormal price and transport conditions 

 such as the country is now experiencing. 



In other words, the effects of forest depletion are felt not 

 only, indeed not chiefly, in the diminution of the total quantity 

 of timber remaining. Its injury is felt particularly through 

 the process of regional exhaustion through a location of the 

 timber still remaining so restricted as greatly to reduce its 

 availability to the average user of wood. It involves all the 

 elements of higher freight costs, more restricted competition, 

 dependence upon the efficiency of transportation, dependence 

 upon climatic or labor conditions in restricted regions, and 

 , innumerable difficulties in getting needed materials of the right 

 kind and at the right time. If all the timber in the United 

 States were cut and our needs supplied by imports from South 

 America and Siberia, the situation would differ from that 

 which we are now rapidly approaching only in degree. The 

 effect of regional timber exhaustion may be compared with 

 what would happen if the orchards and truck farms in the 

 Eastern and Central States disappeared and the housewife had 

 to obtain the daily necessities of her table from Florida and 

 California. 



One of the first effects of the depletion of our virgin forests 

 is the scarcity of timber products of high quality. This has 

 already reached a serious stage in the United States, particu- 

 larly in respect to the high-grade hardwoods which were among 

 the most valuable and distinctive of our original forests. An 

 increasing shortage of such products as compared with their 

 normal consumption must be expected. Not only will their 

 prices be high but it will be increasingly difficult to obtain 

 many of then in the quantities required by American manufac- 

 turers at any price. 



TIMBER DEPLETION AND LUMBER PRICES. 



Timber depletion, while not the primary cause, is an im- 

 portant contributing cause of high prices. The large curtail- 

 ment in lumber production in many regions, due to the cutting 

 out of their forests, has not only made the consumer pay more 

 for his lumber in the form of freight but has enhanced the 

 effects of congestion in transportation and of climatic and other 

 factors causing temporary curtailment of output in the regions 

 which still support a large lumber industry. It has restricted 



68 



opportunity for competition and thereby increased the oppor- 

 tunity of the manufacturer or dealer to auction his lumber 

 stocks for higher prices. This is at least one reason why con- 

 sumers of lumber in Pittsburgh are in some instances paying 

 40 per cent more than consumers of the same material in Port- 

 land, Greg., over and above the freight charge between those 

 points. 



If the war had been fought 40 years ago and had brought 

 the same aftermath in all particulars, it can not be doubted 

 that the presence of a large lumber-producing industry at that 

 time in the Lake States, in the hardwood forests of the Central 

 States, in New York and the northern Alleghenies, and on the 

 Atlantic seaboard would by the very extent of regional compe- 

 tition and the better distribution of transportation have afforded 

 a curb on the upward movement of lumber prices which did not 

 exist in 1919. The continued depletion of our forests will con- 

 tribute to similar sharp increases in lumber prices in time of 

 transportation or other crises and will also lead to high price 

 levels under normal conditions. 



Whatever the precise effects of timber depletion upon recent 



prices, whatever the tendencies in the lumber industry, there 



can be no question that the real solution is to grow and protect 



forests. 



IDLE FOREST LAND. 



The depletion of timber in the United States has not resulted 

 primarily from the use of our forests but from their devasta- 

 tion. The kernel of the problem lies in the enormous areas of 

 forest land which are not producing the timber crops that they 

 should. There are 326 million acres of cut-over timberlands ' in 

 the United States. Their condition ranges from complete devas- 

 tation, through various stages of partial restocking or restocking 

 with trees of inferior quality, to relatively limited areas which 

 are producing timber at or near their full capacity. On 

 81 million acres there is practically no forest growth. This is 

 the result of forest fires and of methods of cutting which de- 

 stroy or prevent new timber growth. There were 27,000 re- 

 corded forests fires in 1919, burning a total of 8i million acres. 

 During the preceding year, 25,000 fires burned over lOi million 

 acres of forest land. An additional large acreage was burned 

 each year, of which no record could be obtained. 



The area of idle or largely idle land is being increased by 

 from 3 to 4 million acres annually as the cutting and burning 

 of forests continue. The enormous area of forest land in the 

 United States not required for any other economic use, esti- 

 mated at 463 million acres, would provide an ample supply of 

 wood if it was kept productive. Depletion has resulted, not 

 from using our timber resources but from failure to use our 

 timber-growing land. 



Nor does this situation exist simply in the less developed and 

 thinly settled regions of the country. The State of Massachu- 

 setts, as a typical example, contains denuded forest lands 

 within a stone's throw of her dense population and highly de- 

 veloped industries, which have been estimated at 1,000,000 acres 

 . and which are largely idle as far as growing wood of economic 

 value is concerned. 



A NATIONAL FORESTRY POLICY. 



A remedy for. this appalling waste must be found in a con- 

 certed effort to stop the devastation of our remaining forests 

 and to put our idle forest lands at work growing timber. It is 

 inconceivable that the United States should forfeit the eco- 



