Waterbury evening Democrat., 1908-11-04
OUR TIMBER SUPPLY. United States Cutting 500 Feet for Every Man, Woman and Child.

we are now cutunS tlmDer lFOm the forests of the United States at the rate. of 800 feet board measure a year for every man, woman and child. In Europe they use only 60 board feet"
 Few statements could be made which would better convince the average man that this country leads the world in the demand for timber. It is made by Treadwell Cleveland, Jr, in a circular which treats of the conservation of the forests, soil, wa ter and all the other great natural resources which has just been pub lished by the United States forest service. In speaking further of the consumption of timber in this coun- try, MT Cleveland says:
 At this rate, in less than thirty years all our remaining virgin tim Der will be cut. Meantime, the for ests which have been cut over are generally in bad way for want of care; they will produce only infer for second growth We are clearly over the verge of timber famine.
 This is not due to necessity, for the forests are one of the renewable resources. Rightly used, they go on producing crop after crop indefinite ly The countries of Europe know this, and Japan knows 1t; and their forests are becoming with time not less, but more productive. We prob ably still possesses sufficient forest land to grow wood enough at home to supply our own needs. If we are not blind, or willfully wasteful, we may yet preserve our forest inde- pendence and, with it, the fourth of our great industries.
 Present wastes in lumber produc- 'tion are enormous. Take the case of yellow pine, which now heads the list in the volume of annual cut. In 1907 1t Is estimated that only one half of all the yellow pine cut during the season was used, and that the other half, amounting to S,000,0
 cords was wasted. Such waste is typical R. A. Long, in his address on Forest Conservation at the con- ference of governors last spring, pointed out that 20 per cent of
 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 nev- CT do to speak of the material re- jected at the mill as waste unless this material could be turned to use by some better and more thorougl form of utilization. But in many cases we know, and in many other cases we have excellent reason to be- lieve, that most, if not all. of this material could be used with profit, It is simply question of intelligent investigation and, more than all, of having the will to economize.
 But there are other ways to con- serve the forests besides cutting in half the present waste of forest pro- ducts. The forests can be made to produce three or four times as rap idly as they do at present. This Is true of both the virgin forests and the 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 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 younger trees would be laying in new stock con- stantly. As regards the cut over land, severe cutting, followed by fire has checked growth so seriously that in most cases reproduction is both poor and slow, while in many other cases there is no true forest repro duction at all at present, and there is but little hope for the future.'