WHERE WE STAND. 13 
assessment, to lax administration of the law, but to no virtue in the 
law itself. Already taxes upon forest lands are being increased by 
the strict enforcement of the tax laws. Even where this has not yet 
been done, the fear that it will be done is a bar to the practice of 
forestry. 
The protection of all public forests from fire is not yet achieved, 
and an average of 1 acre in every 10 of forest privately owned is 
burned over yearly. Many of these fires destroy little or no old 
growth, but wherever fire runs in our forests it either reduces or 
destroys their capacity to produce again. 
We send wood out of the country and we bring it in. But for each 
billion feet brought in we send out 1,500,000,000 feet, and the total 
difference goes to increase by nearly 1 per cent the yearly drain 
upon our forests. No other country is or will be in a position to meet 
our needs. Europe imports more wood than she exports. Africa 
imports structural timber, and can export only expensive hardwoods. 
The same is true of India, the chief forest country of Asia. China 
imports wood, and will require any surplus furnished by Siberia and 
Manchuria. Japan should finally supply her own needs. The Philip- 
pines now import much timber, but should eventually grow it, with 
some surplus for export to China. The total stand of merchantable 
timber in the Philippines is about equal to the lumber cut in the 
United States for two years. Alaska has probably as much as the 
Philippines. Hawaii can export only hardwoods in small quantities. 
Mexico and Central and South America import structural timber and 
export mahogany and cedar. South America has great forests which 
when utilized and cared for should supply the home market. We get 
about 900,000,000 feet of lumber and 900,000 cords of pulp wood from 
-Canada each year, or 2 per cent of the lumber and 23 per cent of the 
pulp wood which we use. Canada has more spruce pulp wood than 
we have, but her standing saw timber is only about one-third of 
ours. Canada will eventually require all the lumber which her forests 
can grow. 
Whether we take care of our forests, or whether we do not, we can 
expect (save for a trifling quantity of finishing woods) to use what 
timber they grow, and no more. 
The records prove that, other factors remaining constant, industrial 
progress is accompanied by increased consumption of wood. This 
fact is so universally manifest that it can not be thought an accident. 
It may be regarded as a law of industrial life. 
Tt might be supposed that the substitution of other materials for 
wood, which takes place with industrial progress, would decrease the 
per capita need of wood, but such is not the fact. Substitutions may 
diminish consumption for specific purposes, but this is more than 
[Cir. 171] 
