HOW UNITED STATES CAN MEET PULP-WOOD REQUIREMENTS. 33 
HOW WE CAN SUPPLY PRESENT AND FUTURE PULP-WOOD 
REQUIREMENTS. 
PRESENT TIMBER RESOURCES, DRAIN, AND REPLACEMENT. 
Important factors which require first consideration in the pulp-wood problem 
of the immediate future, and hardly less in that of the more distant future, are 
the existing timber resources of the country as a whole, the rate at which they 
are being used for pulp wood and all other purposes and the additional drain 
caused by fire and disease, and the extent to which the total drain is offset by 
new growth. The crucial function of the existing resource is to bridge over 
the period from the present to the time our forest lands can be made fully pro- 
ductive by forest management. A consideration of the resources of the United 
States as a whole will accordingly serve as a background for a necessary and 
more detailed consideration by regions, and in some cases by States. 
The pulp and paper industry is full of rumors and suggestions of modified 
and entirely new pulping processes which it is claimed will make the accepted 
pulp species available for more general use or even bring entirely new species 
into the pulp group. It is obviously possible that at almost any time the com- 
mercial feasibility of one or more of these processes may be demonstrated and 
that thereby our conception of pulp-wood resources may be revolutionized. 
Until so proved, however, all new or modified processes must remain speculative 
to a greater or less extent, and it will be necessary to base this national, regional 
and State survey primarily on established usage. The tendency in pulp and 
paper making, as in all other, forms of wood utilization is, however, toward a 
gradual enlargement of the number of species regarded as suitable, and it would 
be surprising if in the future, with an increasing timber shortage and with al- 
most world-wide research into pulp and paper-making materials and processes^ 
this tendency was not hastened. The stand of species not now used for pulp 
and paper making is therefore of more than academic interest, along with the 
stand of those already in demand. 
Less than a third of the original timber stand of the United States remains. 
Of saw timber, the form in which countrywide estimates have hitherto been 
considered, we now have approximately 2,200 billion feet, board measure, of 
virgin and second growth in the United States proper, and an additional 80 
billion feet in southern and southeastern Alaska. (Table 44.) Including material 
below saw-timber size we have more than 3,500 million cords of species now 
used for pulp and paper, about 55 per cent of the total stand. A much larger 
proportion of the species and hence of the volume of Alaskan timber is suitable 
for pulp, and the total is only a little short of 170 million cords. 
Of the total stand in the United States about 760 million cords, including 
jack pine, is suitable for sulphite and mechanical pulp, for which it will be 
remembered 78 per cent of the wood pulp utilized is now required. Eight 
hundred fifty million cords are suitable for soda pulp, which now absorbs 8 
per cent of our requirements, and the very much larger total of 1,920 million 
cords is suitable for sulphate, which takes 14 per cent of the total pulp wood 
needed. (Table 45.) Ail of the Alaskan pulp species fall within the sulphite- 
mechanical group. 
These totals make the annual pulp wood cut from American forests of 4^ 
million cords, the consumption of pulp wood by American mills of approxi- 
mately 1 million cords additional, and even the total amount of pulp wood 
required for all the paper we consume, look exceedingly small. The remaining 
timber must, however, meet the requirements for a large number of other impor- 
tant forest products, such as lumber, fuel wood, ties, etc. The annual pulp 
795SS — 24 3 
