HOW UNITED STATES CAN MEET PULP- WOOD REQUIREMENTS. 27 
In the briefest possible terms, the urgent problem of the immediate future is 
to find 870,000 cords of spruce, fir, and hemlock and 180,000 cords of aspen or 
other hardwoods to offset pulp-wood imports. 
An important but less urgent problem of the future is to secure from our own 
forests sufficient additional pulp wood to cover current imports of pulp and 
paper and to become entirely self-supporting in pulp-wood supplies. This can 
be accomplished by adding a total of 3,916,000 cords to the spruce-fir-hemlock 
cut, 773,000 cords to the pine cut, and 196,000 cords to the hardwood cut. 
A third important future problem is to provide the pulp wood necessary to 
meet the increase in our paper requirements. This on the basis of the past 
decade or two would mean an annually enlarged cut of 237,000 cords of spruce, 
fir, and hemlock, 110,000 cords of pine, and 23,000 cords of hardwoods. The 
formulation of plans for future pulp-wood supplies requires a more detailed con- 
sideration, however, and this is given in the following section. 
Figures 19 and 20 represent these problems graphically, and Table 29 shows 
additional details unnecessary to discuss. 
PROBABLE FUTURE REQUIREMENTS. 
Plans to furnish pulp-wood timber in the future must rest upon probable 
future requirements for paper and upon the part of the requirements which are 
likely to depend upon wood as the raw material and the part which will come 
from other raw materials. 
PROBABLE FUTURE PAPER REQUIREMENTS. 
Any forecast of paper requirements must be more or less speculative. Regard- 
less of the obvious objections, however, some basis of this character is essential 
as a starting point in plans for supplying the necessary raw material. One of 
the methods which may be followed as a basis for a sane forecast is an extension 
into the future of the trends of the immediate past. A consideration of all grades 
of paper together is more likely to be correct than of each grade separately be- 
cause of compensation of possible changes affecting individual grades. A curve 
indicating trends in paper consumption since 1810 is extended as far as 1950 in 
Figure 21, with some allowance for a decreased rate of increase over that of the 
immediate past. Available grade consumption data are also shown. 
The enormous present consumption of paper makes it difficult to accept con- 
sumption in 1950 as great as 13 f million tons, the volume indicated in the curve. 
But a similar question might have been raised with justice in 1909, when require- 
ments were greater than those of any previous year and when a prediction of 
the doubling of consumption by 1922 would have seemed rash indeed. The 
total had, however, nearly doubled in 13 years and in some grades had nearly 
trebled. The doubling of consumption in the past 13 years and quadrupling 
since 1899 makes less incredible an assumption that it may possibly double again 
during the next 25. But a check of the forecast of probable growth of con- 
sumption afforded by projecting the curve is possible, through an anal} r sis of 
the reasons for the past increase and a consideration of their probable future 
influence. 
Other things being equal, growth in population would in itself mean a pro- 
portionate increase in requirements. The present population of the United 
States is approximately 110 million. By 1950, according to the best authori- 
ties, our population should approximate 150 million. If the per capita con- 
sumption remains stationary, this would mean an increase in requirements by 
1950 to about 11 \ million tons. 
