RECOGNIZING THE VALUE OF TIMBER. 17 
quate fire protection will in the main restore good forest conditions. 
In the eastern region about 92,000 acres have been planted, of which 
5,000 acres are state forest lands. 
The central region comprises the prairie country, which includes 
Ilinois, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas, 
the prairie district of Minnesota, and those parts of Oklahoma and 
Texas which lie west of the hardwood belt. It contains about 14,- 
000,000 acres, which should be planted to trees for the protection of 
crops from wind, to reduce evaporation, and to grow timber for farm 
and other local uses. Planting already covers 831,000 acres in this 
region, and wherever rightly done yields remarkably high profit. 
The western region includes the Rocky Mountain and Pacific coast 
States. In it the planting problem is mainly federal. Not less than 
5,000,000 acres or about 3 per cent of the area of the National Forests 
must be planted to protect watersheds and to increase the production 
of timber. Southern California alone contains probably not less 
than 1,000,000 acres outside National Forests which are now unpro- 
ductive and could be made productive under trees. Planting is nec- 
essary upon nearly 3,000,000 acres to protect crops on irrigated lands 
in the western region. Private owners have planted only 37,000 
acres of such lands thus far. On National Forests experimental 
planting and sowing has been done upon 1,762 acres. This has been 
carefully planned and carried out, and already furnishes the know]l- 
edge required for successfully planting on a large scale as soon as the 
necessary funds are available. 
To sum up, our task in forest planting is vast. Thus far in actual 
acreage successfully planted our accomplishment is wholly inadequate. 
The area of naturally treeless lands already planted is utterly insig- 
nificant in comparison with their total extent. Upon denuded forest 
lands we have planted only 1 acre to each 10,000 we have to plant. 
RECOGNIZING THE VALUE OF TIMBER. 
We have manufactured more lumber and other forest products than 
we require. That is, we have established a consumption per capita, 
based not merely on actual need, but on a lavishness, a disregard for 
possible substitutes, and a scale of waste in the use of wood equaled 
in no other country. Supply has been regulated to a demand swollen 
not so much by industrial development, great as it has been, as by a 
product unduly cheap, because the items of logging and manufacture 
were considered the main costs of producing it. The cost of growing 
the trees has always been left out. 
That there is, in the economic sense, overproduction of lumber is 
wholly true, because we manufacture more lumber than our forests 
[Cir. 171] 
