GOVERNMENT FOREST WORK. 35 



is actually placed on the market from the National 

 Forests amounts to only about 3 per cent of the entire 

 consumption of the country. The rest comes from 

 private lands. While the proportion will be altered 

 in the future, the country must still look to private 

 lands for a large part of its forest supplies. 



Public forestry has made vast strides ; but the 

 forests of the country that are in private hands are 

 being depleted with very great rapidity, and almost 

 everywhere without effort to renew them. A grave 

 situation is becoming manifest in various ways, and 

 the problem presented is one that can be solved only 

 by public action. The general practice of forestry on 

 privately owned lands in the United States will not 

 take place through unstimulated private initiative. 



A study made in 1920 by the Forest Service, in 

 response to a Senate resolution calling for a report 

 on timber depletion, lumber prices, lumber exports, 

 and concentration of timber ownership, showed that 

 over two-thirds of the original forests of the United 

 States have been culled, cut over, or burned, and that 

 three-fifths of their merchantable timber is gone. 

 The country is losing about 26,000,000,000 cubic feet 

 of 'wood annually from its forests and is growing but 

 6,000,000,000 feet. We are cutting every class of 

 timber, even trees too small for the sawmill, much 

 faster than it is being replaced. 



There are still large supplies of timber in the 

 United States, but they are not in the right place. 

 Sixty-one per cent of what is left lies west of the 

 Great Plains, far from the bulk of our population, 

 agriculture, and factories. The distance between the 

 average sawmill and the average home builder is 

 steadily increasing, and we shall soon be dependent 

 for the bulk of our construction lumber upon the 

 forests of the Pacific coast. 



