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Show H -o ; TIMBER SUPPLY OF UNITED ' STATES. - "We arc now cutting timber from the forests of the United States at the rate of 500 feet board measure a year Sfor every man, woman and child. In ' Europe they use only 60 board feet." f Few statements could be made 2 l which would1 better convince the avcr- Jf age man that this country leads the T world in the demand for timber. It is made by Tfcadwcll Cleveland, Jr., I in a circular which treats of the con- i scrvation of the forests, soil, water, and all the other great natural rc- sources, which has just been pub- , lished by the United States Forest I Service. In speaking further of the ' consumption of timber in this coun- !try, Mr. Cleveland says: "At this rate, in less than thirty years all ouf remaining virgin timibcr will be cut. Meantime, the forests which have been cut over are generally general-ly in a bad way for want of care; they will produce only inferior second growth. We arc clearly over the verge of a timber famine. "This is not due to necessity, for D the forests are one of the renewable resources. Rightly used, they go on producing crop after cropindefinite-ly. cropindefinite-ly. The countries of Europe know this, and Japan knows it; and their forests are becoming with time not less, but more, productive. We probably prob-ably still possess sufficient forest land to grow wood enough at home to supply sup-ply our own needs. If we are not blind, or willfully wasteful, we may yet preserve our forest independence and, with it, the fourth of our great industries. "Present wastes in lumber production produc-tion are enormous. Take the case of yellow pine, which now heads the list in the volume annual cut. In 1907 it is ostimatcd that only onc-haif of all the yellow pine cut during the season was used, and that the other half, amounting to 8,000,000 cords, was wasted. Such waste is typical. Mr. R. A. Long, in his address on 'Forest Conservation' at the Conference of Governors last spring, pointed out that 20 per cent of the yellow pine was simply left in the woods a waste which represents the timber growing on 300,000 acres. "The rest of the waste takes place at the mill. Of course, it would never nev-er do to speak of the material rejected at the mill as waste unless this material ma-terial could be turned to use by some better and more thorough form of utilization. But in many cases wo know, and in many other cases we have excellent reason to believe, that most, if not all, of this material could be used with profit. It is simply a question of intelligent investigation and, more than all, of having the will to economize. "But there arc" other ways to conserve con-serve the forests ibesides cutting in half the present waste of forest pro ducts. The forests can be made to produce three or four times as rapidly as they &o at present. This is true of both the virgin forests and the cut-over cut-over lands. Virgin forests are often fully stocked with first-class timber, but this stock has been laid in very slowly, on account of the wasteful competition which is carried on constantly con-stantly between the rival trees. Then, too, in the virgin forests there are very many trees which have reached maturity and stopped growing, and these occupy space which, if held by m younger trees, would be laying in a new stock constantly. As regards the cut-over land, severe cutting, followed by fire, has checked growth so ceri-ously ceri-ously that in most cases reproduction is both poor and slow, while in many other cases there is no true forest reproduction re-production at all at present, and there is but little hope for the future." |