8 
No more convincing argument for the importance of this resource in 
a nation’s economy can be offered than to state the value of the forest 
product in the United States. , 
The total annnal product of wood material of all sorts consumed in 
the United States may be valued in round numbers at $1,000,000,000, 
representing, roughly speaking, 25,000,000,000 cubic feet of wood, or 
the annual increase of the wood growth of 500,000,000 acres of forest 
in fair condition. This value exceeds ten times the value of our gold 
and silver output, and three times the annual product of all our min- 
eral and coal mines put together. It is three times the value of our 
wheat crop; and with all the toil and risk which our agricultural crops 
involve they can barely quadruple the value of this product yielded by 
nature for the mere harvesting. : 
If to the value of our total mining product be added the value of 
stone quarries and petroleum, and this sum be increased by the esti- 
mated value of all the steamboats, sailing vessels, canal boats, flatboats, 
and barges plying in American waters and belonging to citizens of the 
United States, it will still be less than the value of the forest product 
by a sum sufficient to purchase at cost of construction all the canals, 
buy up at par all the stock of the telegraph companies, pay their bonded 
debts, and construct and equip all the telephone lines. The value of 
the annual forest product exceeds the gross income of all the railroad 
and transportation companies. It would suffice to pay the indebted- 
ness of all the States, if we leave out New York and Pennsylvania, 
including that of all counties, townships, school districts, and cities 
within those States (in 1880); and it would more than wipe out the 
remaining public debt of the United States. In fact, ranking manu- 
factures of all kinds and agriculture as respectively first and second in 
importance, as far as production of values goes, the forest product — 
occupies the third place. This was the ease according to the census of © 
1880. It is claimed that since then the lumber industry has enlarged to 
such an extent as to make its product second, if not first in value. 
The capital employed in merely milling this product, aside from that 
emp loyed in the harvesting, is roughly estimated at $650,000,000, and 
there are more than 300,000 people occupied in the direct manufacture 
of forest and sawmill products alone, not to count the employment 
atforded by its transportation to centers of consumption and its remanu- 
facture. <i 
It would lead us through all phases and employments of human life 
were we toattempt an enumeration of the uses to which forest products 
are put. 
Not only does the forest furnish the material for the construction of 
dwellings and other structures, our railroad consumption of 500,000,000 
cubic feet of timber included, but countless articles of domestic economy 
and implements necessitate its use. Not only does it yield to two-thirds — 
of our population the fuel to warm their houses and to prepare their 
