6. What shortages in forest products are there today, 
and why? 
During the war, wood was a critical material, with produc- 
tion falling below military and civilian demands. We had 
particular difficulty finding enough high-quality standing 
timber for some of the needed specialty items such as Sitka 
spruce for airplane lumber, walnut for gunstocks, and high- 
quality oak for building small ships. 
After the war, we had difficulty meeting the needs for 
good-quality lumber for housing construction. We are de- 
pending on other countries, primarily Canada, for more than 
80 percent of our newsprint. 
Structural timbers of most species and long, wide boards 
free from knots or other defects are increasingly difficult to 
obtain in the needed quantities. Most of our high-quality 
and specialty-type lumber comes from old-growth forests, 
which are obviously not as available today as previously. 
Chances for opening up new logging operations in unworked 
timber are becoming scarcer; and those that remain are 
mostly in remote areas that can be logged only at high cost. 
Current levels of domestic consumption are being main- 
tained only by drawing heavily on the remaining stands of 
virgin timber in the West and by continuing to deplete saw- 
timber growing stock in the East. 
If supply balances demand in the next few years, it may be 
largely because prices and other economic factors are such 
that people cannot afford to use the timber products they 
otherwise would. In other words, we would be meeting the 
active demand—at very high prices—but not the real need. 
7. Can we increase our supply of wood by reducing 
waste? 
Yes, we can. Forest reappraisal studies indicated that of 
all the wood cut in logging in the United States, only 43 
percent winds up in useful products other than fuel. 
8 
