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Show AA'E NEED MORE TREES At a meeting of the Senate committee com-mittee that is investigating our timber tim-ber problem 'the Secretary of Agriculture, Agri-culture, Mr. Wallace made some striking remarks. He estimated the original supply of timber when this country was first occupied by white men at five trillion, two hundred billion bil-lion board feet. Less than a third of that remains, and most of what does remain is second growth and what he calls "stubble." Every year we cut for lumber and pulp and' lose through fire twenty-six billion cubic feet of wood. The annual growth of our forests amounts to less thn-quarter thn-quarter as much. Every year we cut over ten million acres. At the rate the last of our merchantable timber will be gone in another thirty or forty for-ty years. There are in the country eighty-one million acres of waste land once clothed with forests. We have talked so long and so grandiloquently about our "inexhaustible "inex-haustible forests" that even in the face of the figures it is hard for us to realize how near forest bankruptcy bankrupt-cy we are. But the matter presses; we cannot long delay reforestation of we wish not to he dependent on other countries for our lumber and our pulp. Trees do not grow overnight. over-night. Those that are planted today will scarcely reach maturity before our present standing timber is exhausted. ex-hausted. The Secretary of Agriculture is in earnest in recommending a national forest policy. He wants the national forests extended, and managed so as to produce the largest possible amount am-ount of timber by means of systematic syste-matic planting and careful protection against fire. He wants forest experiment experi-ment stations to carry out thorough research into the quickest and -most economical ways of raising marketable market-able timber. He wants the widest cooperation co-operation with farmers and owners of timberland in order to encourage' them to replant systematically all of their land adapted to forest growth. The national government is pretty pret-ty well awake to the necessity of patient, pa-tient, persistent reforestation. Some of the states ere beginning to see the light, and more will see it before long. The hardest job will be to arouse ar-ouse the private owner of possible timberland to his duty and his eventual event-ual profit. The fact that a- timber crop grows so slowly that often only the next generation reaps it has discouraged dis-couraged a good many men from reforesting. re-foresting. But if the landowner will accustom himself to taking the look and the broad look, he will find that by planting trees he can at very small expense and trouble turn many an acre of waste, unprofitable land into a source of wealth to himself and his dependants, besides performing perform-ing a real service to a country that already begins to feel the pinch r. poverty in woodlands. Incidentally, s'ate legislatures can heln bv rvis-j rvis-j ing the tax laws so as to keep the tax-i tax-i es light on growing timber and collect col-lect only when the stand is cut. The policy of increasing taxes on wood- land that is growing in value but that is nroducing no income is bad: ! has keep many an acre in scrub "'d brambles that might have been nut into pine or spruce or oak or walnut. Youth's Companion, |
