2 BULLETIN 1241, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
REASONS FOR INQUIRY: ITS SCOPE. 
Few, if an}', of the great national problems confronting the American people 
are more urgent or important than that of adequate timber supplies. The prod- 
ucts derived from our forests are so extensive and varied and contribute so 
vitally to national life that the entire public is concerned. Directly or indi- 
rectly the problem affects every industry regardless of the nature of its products, 
even those industries which produce the chief competitors of wood, such as cement 
and steel. Among all industries, however, the problem concerns most obvi- 
ously and directly those, including pulp and paper, which manufacture their 
products from wood as the raw material. 
For a number of reasons the problem of timber supply for pulp and paper 
manufacture has become more serious than it is for most wood-using industries. 
Relatively large plant investments make it much more difficult for paper mills 
to follow the retreating timber stands than is the case with lumber manufacture. 
Comparatively few woods have been used in paper making. These factors and 
the requirement, in one of the most important pulp processes, of abundant and 
cheap power have so far confined the production of paper to but few timber 
regions. Pulp manufacture in these regions has in general followed lumbering, 
and starting with diminished supplies of timber has reduced them still further. 
A stage has now been reached where many pulp and paper mills have either no 
timber of their own or only very limited amounts, and few have permanent 
supplies. Concern for future pulp-wood supplies and their relationship to the 
entire national forest problem led the American Paper and Pulp Association to 
form a special '•' Committee on the perpetuation of the pulp and paper industry 
in the United States." The committee requested the Forest Service to make an 
investigation, the results of which are incorporated in this report. 
For the past 30 years or more the United States has imported pulp wood from 
Canada. For some time the volume of these imports was small; but it grew 
rapidly, particularly during the decade following 1900. For the past 10 years, 
however, pulp-wood imports have remained at substantially the same level. 
Fundamentally we have imported pulp wood because our own supplies of material 
tributary to the existing paper mills have been reduced, while our requirements 
for paper, pulp, and pulp wood have been expanding. The Canadian pulp and 
paper industry has shown a phenomenal development during the last decade, 
and for a number of years it has become increasingly evident that Canadian 
requirements will in time absorb the pulp wood which is now shipped to the 
United States. The fact that pulp-wood imports have been practically at a 
standstill for an entire decade and may now be on the brink of a decline from 
purely economic causes, accentuates the problem of adequate future sources of 
raw material which-demand- >n from the American pulp and paper in- 
dustry and from the American public. The problem demands attention regard- 
less of the recent action of the Canadian Parliament in giving the governor in 
council authority to restri< t pulp-wood exports. It rtomands attention regardless 
of the recommendations which may be made by a Canadian commission now 
■ igating the situation, or of the action which the Canadian Government 
finally takes. The Canadian situation, like the American, is the result of eco- 
nomic forces long operative and certain to continue, with important conse- 
quence-- for the pulp and paper industry in both countries, irrespective of their 
traffic in pulp wood. 
Although of great in p-wood i i form only about 19 
cent of our pulp-wood consumption and about 11 per cent of the pulp 
'1 to meet our entire paper requirements. During the past decr.de, while 
pulp-wood import- have been stationary, imports of both paper ami pulp frofll 
