FUTURE DEMAND FOR TIMBER 



367 







SOURCE: Bureau of Census 



950-52 



Figure 109 



(table 204) . These estimates are based partly on 

 employment estimates and partly on Department 

 of Commerce statistics of wage and salary pay- 

 ments and national income for the lines of activity 

 under consideration. No exact data are available, 

 but that part of the gross national product due to 

 all timber-connected economic activity may have 

 been of the order of $20 billion. 



While these estimates are subject to considerable 

 margins of error, the errors are not large enough 

 to nullify the conclusions that the manpower em- 

 ployed in the growing and protection of timber is 

 comparatively meager and that present expendi- 

 tures on efforts to grow and protect timber (less 

 than 2 percent) represent a comparatively small 

 fraction of the total national income that springs 

 from timber-connected economic activity. Yet 

 the estimates also indicate that a significant part 

 of the Nation's employment and income is gen- 

 erated by timber use and that much economic 

 activity is dependent upon adequate supplies of 

 timber. 



Trends is the Input of Industrial 

 Wood 



Measured in terms of input units, industrial 

 wood has comprised a sizable part of physical- 

 structure materials consumption. In the early 



1900's it represented close to 30 percent (table 

 205). By 1914 the wood sector had begun to 

 shrink, and that shrinkage continued rather stead- 

 ily until it reached 15 percent in 1931. But as 

 economic recovery progressed through the later 

 1930's and 1940's, the wood sector expanded again 

 to a considerable extent. In the period 1950-52, 

 it represented more than 19 percent of total 

 physical-structure materials input. *^ During the 

 period 1940-52 as a whole, input of industrial 

 wood more than kept pace with input of physical- 

 structure materials in general (fig. 110). 



In comparing trends in inputs of industrial 

 wood and of all physical-structure materials (fig. 

 Ill), a significant feature is the contrast between 

 the declining trend of industrial-wood input from 

 1914 to 1932 and the concurrent upward trend of 

 total physical-materials input. Then, since the 

 early 1930's, that contrast in the direction of the 

 two trend lines was changed to a rather close 

 similarity. In fact, input of industrial wood, since 



'5 If the price base of the input units were to be shifted 

 from the 1935-39 average to more recent price relation- 

 ships, the trends in relationship of industrial-wood input 

 to input of all the physical-structure materials would 

 remain about the same. But since the price of industrial 

 wood, lumber in particular, has increased much more than 

 prices of other physical-structure materials, the input of 

 industrial wood — weighted by recent values — would rep- 

 resent considerably more than 19 percent of total physical- 

 structure materials. 



