TIMBER BILLIONS 
ing industrially, but which are restricted to a moderate 
use of wood by inadequate home supplies. Even the 
wood substitutes require immense amounts of wood in 
their manufacture. Every ton of steel requires the 
consumption of wood in mining the iron ore and in min¬ 
ing the coal used to make the steel. The coal mines in 
the country every year use from 250 to 300 million cubic 
feet of wood. To manufacture cement, coal must be 
used, and therefore wood; and large amounts of wood 
are used for forms in concrete construction. Copper 
cannot be made without consuming wood. 
Farmers Are Largest Consumers 
All food is produced with the aid of wood in some 
form, and most of it is shipped in containers made from 
wood. The farmer who raises our foods and the hides 
and textiles from which our clothing is made is the larg¬ 
est consumer of wood in the country. He uses nearly 
one-half the lumber produced. Ninety-eight per cent 
of our rural dwellings are of wood. It would take 150 
billion feet of lumber, or our present annual cut for four 
years, to equip fully the farms in the United States. 
In urban territory ^ to 97 per cent of all houses are 
of wood. Even if brick is used, a six-room house takes 
three-fifths the amount of lumber required for frame 
construction. In building with brick, concrete and steel, 
much wood goes into scaffolding and frames. Some sys¬ 
tems of concrete construction require more wood than 
would be the case if wood were the permanent material, 
and require larger timbers to support the concrete in the 
process of construction than would the building itself 
if it were all of wood. It is estimated that 15 per cent of 
the cost of concrete construction is lumber. 
This isn’t to say that substitutes for wood are not 
gaining ground. They are. But the tendency has been 
more to take up the normal expansion in demand for 
timber due to growth in population and industrial prog- 
1 ess than to lessen the actual volume of wood consump¬ 
tion. Furthermore, as wood is being replaced by other 
