12 THE FORESTS OF THE UNITED STATES: THEIR USE. 
We invite by overtaxation the misuse of our forests. We should plant, to pro- 
tect farms from wind and to make stripped or treeless lands productive, an 
area larger than that of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia combined. 
But so far, lands successfully planted to trees make a total area smaller than 
Rhode Island. And year by year, through careless cutting and fires, we 
lower the capacity of existing forests to produce their like again, or totally 
destroy them. J 
The condition of the world supply of timber makes us already dependent upon 
what we produce. We send out of our country one and one-half times as 
much timber as we bring in. Except for finishing woods, relatively insignifi- 
cant in quantity, we must grow our own supply or go without. 
By wasteful logging, fire, and general failure to provide for a sec- 
ond crop we have made our forests less productive than any others 
of similar area in the world, in spite of the remarkably quick growth 
of most of our timber trees. We have taken our dividends out of our 
forest capital until we have greatly reduced the capital itself. Our 
use of wood per capita is larger than that of any other nation. Can- 
ada, which has 60 acres of forest per capita to our 6, uses less than 200 
cubic feet per capita; Germany uses 37 feet, France 25 feet, and 
Great Britain 14 feet. We use 230 cubic feet. 
We have 65,000,000 acres of cut-over and burned-over forest land, 
upon which actual planting will be necessary to produce a merchant- 
able crop of timber. Of the 9,500,000 acres of forest cut over each 
year, 1,000,000 acres is cleared for farms; 5,750,000 acres is restock- 
ing naturally with enough young growth to produce a merchantable 
crop, and 2,750,000 acres go to increase our national task in forest 
planting. But the entire area already planted successfully in our 
whole history is less than one-fifth of that upon which we destroy the 
forest every year. 
White pine is so nearly used up that the lumber sawed from it in 
the Lake States has fallen off 70 per cent since 1890, and since 1900 
over 45 per cent in the whole country. We make 16 per cent less oak 
lumber and 22 per cent less yellow poplar lumber than we did seven 
years ago. Douglas fir and yellow pine, now our chief source of 
supply, are going far quicker than they grow, and the yellow pine is 
going very rapidly. Yellow-pine lumber in 1907 cost 65 per cent 
more at mill than it did in 1900; Douglas fir cost 63 per cent more; 
white pine 53 per cent more; oak 54 per cent, yellow poplar 78 per 
cent, and hemlock 55 per cent more. 
We tax our forests under the general property tax, a method of 
taxation abandoned long ago by every other great nation. In some 
regions of great importance for timber supply, and in individual 
cases in all regions, the taxation of forest lands has been excessive 
and has led to waste by forcing the destructive logging of mature 
forests, as well as through the abandonment of cut-over lands for 
taxes. That this has not been even more general is due to under- 
pCira74) 
