EOBESTB¥ AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT. 9 



growth. Obviously, such a program can not 



be continued indefinitely. A .few more decades will probably wit- 

 ness the exhaustion of the bulk of the virgin forests of the country 

 except in the more inaccessible portions of the western States. 



In the meantime in many parts of the country local shortages in 

 standing timber have already occurred, with the consequent neces- 

 sity of importing lumber from a distance and at correspondingly 

 higher prices. Many regions which once were blessed with "inex- 

 haustible" forest resources and from which vast quantities of lumber 

 have been shipped now have to depend on other parts of the country 

 for the bulk of their timber. Muskegon, Mich., formerly one of the 

 largest sawmill towns in the world, oilers a good example of this. In 

 18S7 the sawmills of the town had a cut of more than 665,000,000 feet 

 of lumber and 520,000,000 shingles ; and it is estimated that the entire 

 output of the forests tributary to the Muskegon Elver has exceeded 

 £5 billion board feet. To-day lumbering operations have practically 

 ceased. One small mill cuts some 3 or 4 million feet a year of in- 

 ferior material picked up here and there along the shore of the lake. 

 What lumber is used comes mainly from the South and from Wis- 

 consin and Minnesota. 



Depletion of local supplies has resulted very naturally in more 

 or less marked increases in the prices of wood products in general. 

 In spite of the fact that cheap stumpage has been available in other 

 parts of the country, transportation charges have added materially 

 to the cost of the lumber at the point of consumption. In the 

 Middle West, for example, 20 per cent or more of the present retail 

 price of lumber represents freight charges. Western lumber paying 

 freights of from $10 to $18 per thousand board feet is a considerable 

 factor in the supply of the East. Obviously, if the center of lumber 

 production is to be located thousands of miles from the center of 

 population, retail prices are bound to rise and the consumer must 

 either pay the bill or go without. 



The possibility of supplementing our own depleted forest re- 

 sources from abroad has often been suggested optimistically but all 

 too vaguely. Careful studies of foreign sources of supply seem to 

 indicate that too much reliance should not be placed on this hope. 

 Surplus supplies of timber still exist in Russia, Finland, and Swe- 

 den, but the growing demands of other European countries are almost 

 certain to render comparatively little of this available for use in the 

 United States. The forest resources of Central and South America 

 are still to a large extent unknown, but it is very doubtful whether 

 they can be counted on to supply us with any considerable amount 

 of timber suitable for ordinary construction purposes. Canada still 

 has a surplus, but this, too, is being rapidly depleted, and it is reason- 

 16S40 c — B ull . 638—18 2 



