HOW UNITED STATES CAN MEET PULP- WOOD REQUIREMENTS. 35 
try as related to the forest. Compelled to adjust itself to sustained supplies in 
place of timber mining, it will attain permanence by supplying its needs either 
through pulp-wood production as an incident or supplement to the growing of 
timber for other requirements, or through intensive production of pulp wood 
solely, on short rotations, under the principles of forestry. Doubtless during the 
transition period at least self-preservation will require it to resort to both. 
This, however, concerns the future rather than the immediate timber situa- 
tion, already summarized. That situation presents a broad and urgent national 
problem. On top of it we now face the advisability of an increased cut from our 
own forest lands to offset present pulp-wood imports, to meet the rapidly increas- 
ing demands of the future, and in general to reduce the extent of 'our dependence 
upon foreign timber. This is a handicap which must be overcome. 
A detailed examination of the widely different conditions in each of the several 
forest regions offers the only possibility of working out a plan for an increased 
pulp-wood cut in the immediate future which will not make the general timber 
situation still worse than it is. Before that is attempted, however, the national 
aspects of another and closely related resource, the area of forest land and the 
extent to which it is now being reduced, must be taken into account. Although 
anticipating a phase of the question which might logically be considered later, 
the more recent trends affecting the forest-land area are also projected into the 
future in order to establish an area basis for the determination of potential timber 
growth under forest management. 
PRESENT AND PROBABLE FUTURE AREA OF FOREST LAND. 
The area of forest land in the United States has been reduced from its original 
extent of about 822 million acTes to approximately 470 million. After three cen- 
turies of continuous struggle the area of improved agricultural lands has grown 
to 503 million acres, only slightly larger than the residue of forest land. 
It has become increasingly evident, particularly during the last four or five 
decades, that there are very definite limitations to the further encroachment of 
agriculture upon forest lands. Decades of repeated attempts in the various 
forest regions have shown that a large part of their land area can not be- put to 
profitable agricultural use. Agricultural economists have been gradually coming 
to the conclusion that the future tendency in agriculture will be more toward 
intensive cultivation of the better lands, and that those upon which the margin 
of profit is small or uncertain, because of poor soil, or climate, or topography, or 
location, will tend to pass out of agricultural use. In some of our forest regions, 
in fact, this tendency has been under way for many years, and in many the 
reversion to forest is proceeding faster than the cultivation of new lands. For the 
whole United States there has grown up during the past 50 years an area of scores 
of millions of acres of cut or burned-over forest land which has not been brought 
into farms, in spite, until very recently, of the greatest popular demand for land 
in our entire history. 
Whether land of relatively low agricultural value has gone into agricultural 
use up to the present has depended in general upon the ability of the farmer 
to make a living on it from the production of farm products. In the determina- 
tion of future land use the possibility of greater profits from timber growing will 
undoubtedly be a factor. Unquestionably there will be a shifting of forest land 
into agricultural use in some regions and localities, and the opposite tendency in 
others. A rough classification of the area under each form of use is gradually 
being determined by the play of economic forces. The future area of forest 
land may be slightly less or more than our present area of 470 million acres. 
Some agricultural economists believe that with higher production and somewhat 
