N Vr^^STAT E S 

 DEPARTMENT 

 OP AGRICULTURE- 



q^JCE OB 



WITH U1TCI:E SAM'S MTURALISTS 



Friday, DecemlDer 6, 1929 



NOT FOR PIBLICATIOIT 



SFEAKIITQ TII^; IO-I/2 minutes. 



AMOUUCEMEITT: This is the day and hour when our Wilds Man takes us to Washington 

 for our regular Friday visit with Uncle Sam's Naturalists. He has "been talking 

 with men in the Forest Service, United States Department of Agriculture, trying 

 to get the facts on the future of the United States' wood supply. The facts make 

 an interesting sotry. And n-ow here's the Wilds Man — ready to tell that story in 



a talk which is broadcast by Station -throiJgh a cooperative arrangement with 



the Department of Agriculture. 



I can remember the time when one of "the great concerns of the farmer was 

 to get the timber OFF his land. That, in the country where 1 lived, was a time 

 of clearing the land. And clearing the land was no small job. But a big change 

 has come in the timber supplies of this country and now a whole lot of fanneibs 

 would like to see more timber ON their land. 



The same change has come about in the hills and in the forests, Ainerica's 

 great stands of virgin timber — once thotight I:KEXHAUSTIBLS — ^have been used up so 

 fast that already the last extensive stands are being tapped. The United States 

 is a grea* wood-using nation. Our newspapers alone eat up thousands of acres of 

 timber every year. That morning or evening paper you biay for a few cents is 

 printed on a wood-pulp paper and you have to have trees if you're going to have 

 wood pulp. That's only one example of the country's mamoth appetite for wood 

 and that wood has to be supplied somehow — unless we can find a good substitute. 

 The trouble is, virgin timber is practically irreplaceable becavise of the length 

 of time necessary to grow material of the highest quality. You can't grow a 

 tree over the week-end, you know. 



I was talking this over with some of the men in the Forest Service of the 

 Department of Agriculture the other day and they gave me some figures. Tlie forest 

 land of the United States, they said, amounts to about 730 thousand sq'uare miles 

 altogether. About 150 thousand square miles is managed for permanent timber pro- 

 duction under public ownership, Federal, State, and local. The other 580 thoix^r 

 ganS. square railes~M an ao^ea larger than France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, 

 G-ermany, and the British Isles, by the way — is privately owned. This privately 

 owned forest land supports industries giving employment to more than a million 

 people and turning out each year wood products valued at 2 billion dollars. This 

 is enough to supply domestic needs and furnish, wood products worth about 200 

 million dollars to foreign countries. 



That sounds very impressive — that sounds like very good business. That 



sornids like America's wood pile is a very big proposition and it is. But the 



trouble is, only a small portion of this woods land is now being handled so as to 

 produce timber continuously. The greater part of the land is gradually drifting 



