The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-08-19

have gun stock. which is made oe wood. The gun stocks should be pre- ferably of walnut. but they have been using birch in the contracts for the allies, and probably birch and gum will be used for the new rifles 1t takes about 10 feet of lumber to make a gun stock. and it will take 10,000,o00 feet to make the stocks for 1000, ,000 new rifles. Our army of 1000, ,00O men will probably require 5000 900 rifles and this means 50.000,00O feet of the finest hardwood.
 Among the machines which require line lumber are the airplanes. 1t Is said that the allies have 10000 flying machines on the western front and that Uncle Sam will probably ship thousands to France. The requirement here is light. strong material. Ash IS used for the bent woods and va rlety of different woods are employed Tor the propellers. The woods are Joined in such fashion as to give the product the necessary strength and stlil prevent checking and warping. spruce Is used for airplane wings. To building 10000 airplanes we shall need something like 20.000,000 feet of rough lumb Der, or enough to floor 800 acres.
 might mention a score of other de- hands, such as artillery trucks, auto mobiles. new docks and piers, tools and rallroad construction, as well as the lumber for timbering mines, and the new factories now building to make army and naval supplies. All of these will re- require more or less wood, and the total estimate of 2000, 100000 feet is probably un- der what will be required.
 And now let us look at the supply of timber we have to satisfy these demands. They seem enormous, until we consider the great extent of our lumber industry. They are. in fact. not more than per cent of the amount we use in one year; there is now four or five times as much lumber as the government wants already manufactured at the sawmills, and we have an equal amount in the many retail yards and distributing centers throughout the country.
 The United States is the greatest lum- Der market of the world. Our forests are now bringing in about $1, 400, 0,0000 GOO year. and the wood we annually cut is enough to pave a road IS feet wide with tim Der foot thick reaching all the way from the earth to the moon, and leave some to spare. In a single year we con- sun1e 45,000,0O0o00 or 5o,000, 0000 board feet of lumber, and enough firewood to sup ply every family in the United States with two cords and more. We use ,050 000, ,000 railroad ties and 3,500,0O0 telegraph and telephone poles We are annually cutting into veneering more than two-thirds the
 
 barracks; and the wood that goes into the mines, into barrels, boxes and other pack ing receptacles, and in making pulp for l the newspapers, amounts to hundreds of millions of feet. The waste is enormous and there is also a great loss from fires and insects, so that the annual drain up- on the United States rorests is said to be in the neighborhood of $100 00O, GOO 900 board feet. The annual growth is only about one-third this amount, so that 1t will be seen that we must have better forest protection and concentration or our forests will in time disappear
 As 1t is now, almost half of the wood lands of the United States has been cut away. When Capt. John Smith landed at the mouth of the James, not far from where they are to erect the great training camp for the navy, this country had a stand of merchantable timber which has been estimated by the forestry authorities as more than 5,o00,000, ,000,O00 board feet; 1t was enough to have made board walk a foot wide and an inch thick l. O00, 900 miles long. It would have been sufficient to have covered board walk 10 feet wide from the earth to the sun, with enough left over to have belted old Mother Earth at the equator with band of boards three and half miles in width. That little remainder, if cut into flooring, could have carpeted New Eng K, and Maryland. The total was more than 3500o0,000 acres. It was greater than one third of all Europe.
 This immense forest was divided into five tracks. There were the northern woods, the home of the white pine, cov- ering an area six times as great as that of Ohio, or about 30 times the size of Massachusetts. There were the south- ern forests, made largely of yellow pine and cypress, which were about equal in size to that of the northern, and there was the central forest, which lay be- tween. The central forest was almost all hardwoods. It had an area larger than the timber lands north and south, and the lumber within 1t was about has as much more as in either of the other two divisions If it were stretched around the world, it would have made a band of forest about two miles In width.
 In addition to these there were the Rocky mountain forests, which contained something like 40O0, ,0o0o,000 board feet, and the Pacific forests, which were smaller in area, but which had the biggest trees of the country. They had the redwoods the western yellow pine and the Douglas fir They contained the greatest giants of vegetable growth the world has even seen. and had more lumber to the area than any other woods known to history. The area of those forests was about twice the size of Pennsylvania, but the stand was so great that it equaled the hardwood central forest of the east, and contained enough lumber, board measure to have belted the globe with inch boards to a width of two miles,
 Now let us see what we have left. Our board walk to the sun has been just about cut in half, and the same is true of the left-overs. A walk could still be made all the way to the sun from the trees now standing, but it would be only five feet in width. and the belt around the equa- tor made of the waste would be con siderably narrowed Almost 24000 000,00a 0c0 of the 5,200 eco, ,000 which was the extent of the original stand have been cut away, and the amount left in our siderably narrowed. Almost 2,400 000,0 000- board feet. This, at our present rate of consumption would be entirely used up within the next generator. Nevertheless, the amount still standing is enough to make cottage homes for all the people on earth
 Until the time of our Civil war the most of the lumber consumed in the United States was cut from New Eng land and the Alleghany mountains. For the next 30 years the vast white and Nor way pine regions of the states along the great lakes furnished mos. oe the lum- Der; and the industry then moved into the southern yellow pine belt along the Atlantic ocean and the Mexican gulf That region is now the chief center of our lumber industry. The cut there is about present rate 20 years will practically ex- hause the supply The total stand of southern yellow pine Is estimated to be L