Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1919-05-29
n. {. TIMBER SUPPLY
Population Grows Apace But
Forest Wealth Decreases
OF Our Original Timber Only 35 Per
Cent. Remnins-Forestcrs Trying
to Apply the Lesson Learned
in France

direful days to come when local timber
supply should fail us. State officials who
had been studying the statistics of the
lumber trade began to realize, that I'M
less something was soon done to curb
fires in the woods, and to replant the cut
over areas, we should soon be buying our
raw lumber in other sections of the
country. Only thirty years ago and New
England was then producing enough
high-grade lumber to supply it's own
needs and to send considerable quanti-
ties beyond It's borders even across the
sea, Says Allen Chamberlain in the Bos-
ton Transcript. Officials and interested
citizens talked, and legislatures consider
ed and in some cases reluctantly passed
laws designed more to allay growing
disquietude than to deal with the subject
in any genuinely constructive way Ten
years later and New England had begun
to be an importer of timber from the
South and West. At that time, only
twenty years ago, Southern pine railroad
ties were being laid in New Hampshire
main line track. In New Hampshire. a
heavily wooded State! To-day we have
the word of Colonel Henry S. Graves,
chief of the United States Forest Service
that probably fully thirty per cent. of all
the lumber used in New England comes
from outside territory. That does not in
clude the large amount of pulpwood that
is also imported by our paper makers.
SOME SMALL BEGINNINGS
In all these past thirty or more years
the talk about the need for doing some
thing to build up our own forest re-
sources has kept up and Increased in
volume. Forestry associations have been
organized, forest commissions have been
appointed by some of the States, schools
for training professional foresters have
been created. public funds have been ap-
propriated. national, State and town for
ests have been bought corporations US
ing wood in their business have to some
extent made a start tomard practicing
better cutting methods on their own
land and have in some instances planted
cut-over tracts. Here and there a pri-
vate landowner has planted up a dozen
or hundred or two acres as an invest
ment. Furthermore an organized effort
has been made by the States to check
fires Thus the situation has been
| camoufiaged, while politics and private
interest held back more progressive
plans. Possibly a change in policy will
now be forced because of the recognized
handicap under which the wood-using in
dustries of this section are obliged to
labor in competition with similar plants
| that are closer to the source of new lum-
Der. AS yet local woodlands are able to
| supply something like sixty per cent. of
the lumber that Is used in New England.
But at what cost? The answer may be
| readily surmised when the forest service
| says that We are cutting each year twice
| as much as grows. At that rate the
future Is not bright for the ninety thou
! sand wage earners, or for the three
| hundred million dollars of capital that
| are now connected with the wood manu-
featuring and forest industries Of this
region.
CAN NEW ENGLAND MATCH
| FRANCE?
| 1t is an interesting coincidence, as
pointed out by Colonel Graves that the
forest areas of New England and of
France are very nearly equal, some
twenty-five million acres. As New
| Englander he Is personally familiar with
the character of our woodlands, and
through his recent war service. as the
organizer Of the work done by the United
States Forest Regiments in France, he
has an intimate knowledge of the condi-
|
markedly similar in many respects that
Colonel Graves holds up the policy of the
French as a pattern for us to follow
The marked dissmilarty is in the amount
of timber produced each year, the French
forests producing fifty per cent. more
than those Of New England. But France
has been systematically building up her
forests for term of years. while New
| n "a n a
depicting hers. At the outbreak of the
war France had not succeeded in develop.
ing her forests to the point where they
could fully supply her needs. She was
obliged to import about eighty million
cubic feet a year for domestic uses
which Is a large order, but New England
is already buying more than that outside
and her bill is increasing year by year
Until it became necessary for France tc
dig into this accommodating capital II
| order to furnish war material for hel
own forces, and for those of England t.
a considerable extent, and for our owr
troops, her wood-using Industries and the
forests employed more than seven hun
dred thousand workers, as against tn,
paltry ninety thousand who gain a livel
hood from a similar source in New Eng
land.
PACIFIC FIR VERSUS YANKEE
| PINE
Old England has learned her lesson In
forestry through the hard knocks of tn,
war. Her officials have been franl
enough to state that their lack of home
grown timber nearly lost them the wal
at one juncture. Nor did the English
government walt until the declaration Of
peace before acting upon this dearl,
bought wisdom. A commission was a
once set at work to produce a plan fol
1.-The afforestation of the islands, and as {
result they will plant more than milior
acres to timber during the next fort,
years, spending seventeen million dol
lars In this work within the first tel
Years. New England is certainly capabl,
OF seeing the point of all this. Woo
users in this section had some unpleasant
experiences when the strain of war de
mands was put upon them. New Hamp
shire, for instance, was keenly chagrine,
to find year ago that its native wood
lands were incapable of supplying tn,
sash and door stock for the government
housing enterprise at Portsmouth Tha
business went to the West. Toward tn,
close of the fighting a big box-makin;
concern In this State, n corporation will
woodlands of its own, and operatin,
widely with its own crews in the pine lot
of three or four States. found 1t neccs
sary to bring ten carloads of lumber al
the way across the continent from tn
Pacific Coast.
CAN'T SUPPLY OUR OWN RAIL