r 



340 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF 



demanded and still succeed, because we have superior facilities for doing the 

 mechanical work necessary in handling, hauling and manufacturing the main product. 

 But there are other and more important advantages which the forester abroad has 

 over the American lumberman. In all European forests there is no waste material. 

 Every part of the tree is marketed ; in some places even the leaves are gathered into 

 bales and sold. The limbs, tree tops and stumps — every bit of wood to the smallest 

 stick and fagot — are converted into money, the largest part of this material being sold 

 for fuel. Furthermore, every tree belongs to some merchantable species that is 

 convertible into cash at any time; while in our Adirondack forests, over seventy per 

 cent, of the trees, on an average, could not be sold if they were cut; or, if sold, the 

 price would not equal the cost of cutting and transportation. 



Now, in order to understand how European forestry methods are so profitable, and 

 why their system has not been introduced in American forests, it is necessary to note 

 how far their income is derived from the sale of lumber, and how much comes from 

 what, in this country, becomes waste and valueless. 



Let us take, for example, the forests of Switzerland, which yield annually a net 

 revenue of $4. 16 per acre. The total yield from their 1,940,659 acres approximates 

 closely to the following classification : * 



PRODUCT. CUBIC METRES. FRANCS. 



Lumber, ........ 1,115,600 17,849,600 



Firewood, 1,673,400 15,478,950 



Pasturage, bark, leaves, berries, by-products, . 6,671,450 



40,000,000 



From these statistics it appears that lumber formed only forty per cent, of the 

 product, and that sixty per cent, is represented by merchantable material which in 

 the American forests goes to waste, and must be left on the ground to rot. It will be 

 noticed, also, that over fifty-five per cent, of the money received came from the sale 

 of material other than lumber. 



Now it is evident that if our American foresters, or lumbermen as they are called, 

 could sell their waste material — the limbs, tops and defective trees — , if they could 

 obtain for this waste a sum of money exceeding that which they receive for their saw 

 logs, they, too, could develop a model system of conservative management, and 

 undoubtedly would have done so long before this. 



Some of the private forests in New York have recently been placed under a system 

 of management which contemplates better and more economical methods than have 

 heretofore prevailed. But these improved methods must be subordinated to the 

 * United States Consular Reports on Forestry in Europe, Page 221. Washington, D. C, 1887. 



