HOW UNITED STATES CAN" MEET PULP-WOOD REQUIREMENTS. 55 
Both timber and power can be secured from the Forest Service and Federal 
Power Commission, respectively, under terms which President Harding in his 
Seattle speech on' Alaska described as follows: 
"I venture, with some knowledge of conditions in various paper-making 
countries, to state that no better contract, indeed none so good, can be secured 
in any of them." 
The development of the pulp and paper industry has unquestionably been 
retarded by the pioneer conditions which obtain in Alaska, The relatively few 
settlements are rather widely scattered. This means, among other things, the 
lack of local skilled labor, particularly for a new industry, which would also 
have to contend with a lack of local supplies and with the absence of machine- 
shop facilities. These conditions would necessitate the carrying of larger stocks 
at the plant and relatively long delays in securing new materials and parts by 
boat from the Pacific coast or by the Canadian railroads. 
Capital moves slowly into new regions, and this is especial];/ true in industries, 
such as pulp and paper manufacture, requiring large initial investments. While 
the great development of pulp and paper manufacture in the United States has 
come during the last three decades, the failure to meet American demands lias 
increased most rapidly during the last decade, a period much of which has been 
so unsettled as to make pioneering efforts especially hazardous. American 
capital has gone to the eastern (Canadian forests, which are nearer to American 
centers of consumption and in which conditions are more comparable with those 
in the Northeastern and Lake States. Alaska has seemed very remote, and 
until recent years there has been an absence of the detailed, authoritative 
data necessary to secure real interest on the part of capital. Ocean freights, with 
a relatively small volume of traffic, have been high. Alaskan timbers are suit- 
able for newsprint production, and until the war newsprint prices particularly 
were relatively low. 
Neither time nor the funds available have permitted an attempt to secure 
exact data on the possibility of successful competition of Alaska in eastern pulp 
and paper markets with Canada, or even with American mills. A few signifi- 
cant facts, however, will be given. Average prices paid by American mills for 
imported spruce were $27.98 per cord in 1921 and $21.87 per cord in 1922. 
Since these were average prices, many mills must have paid more. In one large 
pulp unit on the Tongass National Forest, the timber on which was recently 
sold, it was estimated that, exclusive of a purely nominal figure for stumpage, 
the cost of pulp wood at the mill from the more accessible timber on the area 
would not exceed $5.50 per cord, and that for the entire sale area the cost would 
be approximately $8 per cord. These estimates are based on 1923 wage scales 
and mill costs. They leave a large margin for the payment of freight from 
Alaska to eastern markets, as compared with spruce-pulp-wood prices of 1921, 
or even 1922. This is particularly true if the concern which undertakes a pulp 
and paper development finances its own system of ocean transportation. 
SOUTHERN STATES. 
Second in importance to our dependence for sulphite and mechanical pulp 
woods is that for sulphate pulp wood. As shown by Figure 27, the southern-pine 
States from Virginia to Texas contain far and away the largest supply of suitable 
timber and have the additional advantage of easy access to the principal markets 
of the country. Two-thirds of the timber stand of these States, or nearl}' 1,300 
millon cords, is of species used to a greater or less e»tent for pulp (Table 61), and 
the greater part of this is pine. 
The South Atlantic and Gulf States, considered separately in the report on 
Senate Resolution 311, are here combined because of similarity of conditions and 
