board feet more than is needed for its share of the 
goal. However, as previously noted, much of the 
western timber is inactive capital in the virgin 
stands. If only the second-growth saw _ timber 
there is considered, the active growing stock is 235 
billion board feet or only 35 percent of what it 
would be necessary to develop by judicious selec- 
tive cutting in the virgin stands and by establish- 
ing new stands on clear-cut areas. 
These estimates of the growing -stock needed 
to realize the growth objectives assume a proper 
distribution of timber sizes. They assume also 
that the virgin timber will have been converted 
to active growing stock. To the extent that these 
assumptions are not fulfilled, the volume of grow- 
ing stock would need to be higher. On the other 
hand, if more intensive forest management should 
‘increase the proportion of yield from thinnings 
BILLION BOARD FEET 
and improvement cuttings, or if new utilization 
practices should reduce the cutting ages for final 
harvest, less growing stock would be required. 
1,200 
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FicureE 11.—Present saw-timber stand, and growing stock 
needed to sustain the growth goals. 
806034°—49—4 
Forests and National Prosperity 
_ large scale. 
In any event, it is clear that the growing stock 
should be increased. However large the present 
stand looms in relation to current consumption, 
it is not enough to yield an annual crop of the 
size suggested in the goals. Indeed, with growing 
stock in the North and South so deficient it is 
doubly fortunate that there is some residue of 
virgin timber to supplement growth through the 
next few decades. 
When Could the Growth Goal 
Be Reached? 
A comprehensive program dealing adequately 
with all phases of a sustained timber supply would 
imply, for example, that all the forests would be 
well protected, that destructive cutting would be 
stopped, that at least 400 million acres would be 
managed so as to build up growing stock and out- 
put, that from 20 to 25 percent of the land would 
be under very intensive management, that planting 
of nonproductive lands would be undertaken on 
an unprecedented scale, and that access road con- 
struction in the West would be continued on a 
Assuming all these things, how much 
timber could be budgeted for harvesting each year, 
and how rapidly could the objectives in saw-timber 
growth be reached? 
No hard and fast answer can be given. But 
enough is known about the condition of the forests 
and their potential growth capacity to give the 
theoretical limits of accomplishment if the Nation 
were to embark on a course such as that suggested 
above. Calculations of saw-timber growing stock 
in each region have been carried forward for 75 
years, balancing the growth that might be realized 
under such a comprehensive forestry program 
against an assumed saw-timber drain, decade by 
decade. A major consideration was to keep the 
annual output as high as possible without pre- 
cluding the possibility of reaching the regional 
growth goal in 75 years. ‘The story is told graph- 
ically in figure 12. 
For the first 30 years, drain might remain higher 
than annual growth chiefly because of the large 
contribution virgin timber could make to the 
total cut in the early decades. From the outset, 
however, growth would be increasing and before 
the end of the century it might be some 10 billion 
board feet above the assumed annual drain. 
Under a comprehensive forest program, timber 
4] 
