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Show Ttere TFi7 Always Be Christmas' Trees WASHINGTON, D. C. (Special) (Spe-cial) Fifty years ago a President Presi-dent of the United States banned the use of Christmas trees in the White House because be-cause he thought the practice of cutting young evergreens was wasteful. That order, issued by Theodore Eoosevelt, went unchallenged until un-til two of his young sons were caught in the act of smuggling a Christmas tree into the Executive Mansion. To escape their father's presidential wrath they appealed to America's first professional forester for-ester and Theodore Eoosevelt s good friend, Gifford Pinchot, to intercede in-tercede for them. Pinchot did, pointing out that proper cutting of small evergreens for Christmas use is not harmful and frequently actually helps a forest. That advice, good enough 50 years ago to lift a White House ban and convince a strong-minded president, is echoed this year by no less an authority than the American Forest Products Industries. Indus-tries. "Don't worry about the plight of the poor Christmas tree," says this wood-industry sponsored organization, or-ganization, "it's as replaceable as the Thanksgiving turkey and just as Indispensable to the American BC6T16" Nearly half of the 21 million evergreens that make up America's Ameri-ca's 1949 Christmas tree harvest were farm produced. Nearly nine-tenths nine-tenths of the entire crop was cut on privately owned timberland. To augment this domestic Christmas tree harvest, about five million evergreens are imported annually, most of them from Canada. Besides bringing a fragrant freshness of the forest into two out of every three American homes this December; the three-month three-month Christmas tree harvest pours an estimated 50 million dollars dol-lars into the Nation's economic bloodstream. Most American Christmas trees are thinned from natural growth forests. An original stand of from five to ten thousand trees per acre will actually mature only a few . hundred sawlog-size trees. Most if the small evergreens, selectively rat for Christmas sale, would sooner or later have been eliminated elim-inated by Nature in the life and death struggle for forest space. When it comes to selecting a Christmas tree, most Americans have as many individual likes and dislikes as they have in motor cars or hats. Color, limb strength, shape, compactness, fragrance, an ' v, , T V vtz ' f ? n "A Tiesa spruce trees from Northern Minnesota's seoond growth forests will bring Christmas cheer into homes all over America. This scene typifies typi-fies the holiday forest harvest just completed. (Halvorson Trees, Photo) ability to retain needles and, of course, price are factors. Best seller on the Christmas tree market today is the balsam fir, a product of New England and Northeastern United States. About six and one-half million of these are sold in an average year. Douglas firs, products of the Pacific Coast, are the second most popular. Black spruce, red cedar and white spruce follow in that order. Together these make up 83 percent of all Christmas trees sold in the United States. Scotch pine, Southern pine, red spruce, Virginia Vir-ginia pine, white fir, Norway spruce, hemlock, cypress, juniper and Engleman spruce also are marketed in commercial quantities. quanti-ties. Historians disagree over how and when this Christmas tree business busi-ness started in America. Homesick Home-sick Hessian soldiers, brought over from Germany by the British to fight George Washington's Continental Army, probably introduced in-troduced the custom. Another German, the sixteenth century religious leader Martin Luther, generally is credited with originating the custom of decorating decorat-ing Christmas trees with lights. Noting how snowflakes on the boughs of evergreen trees reflected reflect-ed moonlight, Martin Luther determined de-termined to capture the same effect in his home by placing lighted candles on the tree. The idea spread through the centuries. This Christmas eve, just as they have since 1923, people will gather around an evergreen tree on the White House lawn to participate in a tree lighting ceremony dedicated dedi-cated by the President and broadcast broad-cast nationally. Forestry-wise the United States has traveled a full circle since Theodore Roosevelt's day. Christmas Christ-mas trees, like sawlogs and pulp-wood, pulp-wood, have become a crop in America. This country's forests, if protected and wisely managed, can produce both wood and Christmas trees in quantities sufficient suf-ficient to meet present as well as future needs. |