Mountain Home Republican. [volume] (Mountain Home, Idaho) 1915-1946, 1921-12-31
Use Much Foreign Pulp and Paper
in Year 1920.

iWotutfuS Oh the news print uS6u
In the United States in 1920 was
made from wood grown on foreign
soil. Out of more than $500, 900
tons OF wood pulp consumed for all
purposes, IS per cent game from
foreign countries. Over $191, 000,-
600 was paid for the pulp wood
wood pulp, and paper imported. To
this extent the United States has be-
come dependent upon markets out
side its control.
n country can no longer draw
its supply from our rapidly disap-
Fearing eastern forests. AS a result
primarily of forest depletion, the
cost on pulp wood rose more than 10
per cent in the five year period,
l9l6-l92O, and of wood pulp 35 per
cent since 1918. These and other
facts are presented In a bulletin
Pulp Wood Consumption and Wood
Pulp Production, 1920" prepared by
the forest service, United States De-
partment Of Agriculture, in coop
Grafton with the American Pulp and
Paper Association Of New York.
Prior to 1909 practically all the
paper consumed in this country was
manufactured here. This is no long
er true. The United States is now
becoming and more an import
Ing nation, and the papermaking in
dustry has grown until its capita1i-
cation approaches the billion dollar
mark.
THE trouble in BRIEF a y the
bulletin, lis that we have mills
without forests in the east and for
ests without mills in the west" In
New England and New York, where
the forests have been largely worked
out, there is the heaviest concentra-
ton OF mills. In Alaska, where
there is enough spruce and hemlock
to supply present American news.
print requirements indefinitely,
there is only one mill. rrhe indus
try has remained stationary in the
east while the lumber industry has
moved west.
I'm Minnesota, for instance, where
domestic spruce forms 95 per cent
of the consumption, pulp wood costs
5000 per ton less than in New
York. II New York pulp mills could
have brought their spruce from ma
tive forests at a saving of $40 a cord
the saving on their imports alone
would have been $4,000, 900 during
the year 1920"
Expensive eastern mills can not
be moved west nor can the great
forests Of Alaska and the Pacific
slope be set down in New England
! and New York. Nor can the United
States count uptE reducing the
amount of pulp wood necessary to
meet present requirements. Furth-
er, Canada can not be depended up
on indefinitely as a source of supply,
for Canadian forests are no more
limitless than those of the United
States.
The remedy is twofold; locate
more mills on the Pacific slope and
reforest the east.
"Reforestation will take not only
skill, energy, and money" say the
foresters, ''but most serious of all,
many years must elapre before the
east can be put on a thoroughly
self-supporting basis. Yet there is
no choice left to us. The work
must be undertaken. We must have
pulp, and for every year of delay
we must pay increasingly heavy
penalties for neglecting to restore
the forests as fast as the wood is
lUhCuu1Cus Z
AS the result of unregulated lun-
bering, 1t is pointed out, followed by
Gre, more than 10000, 600 acres of
potential forest lands, most access
sible to eastern and lake state mills,
are now producing nothing or sup
porting a growth of little use except
for irewood. If they were produc-
ing only a third off a cord of pulp
wood an acre every year, the total
yield would be 20, 600 900 cords or
approximately twice the amount
needed to supply the entire Ameri-
can consumption at the present time.
Wood-pulp production in 1920 is
placed at 3,821.724 tons and the
average value at the mill at $72.2O
per ton, an increase of 1882 per
ton, or 81 per cent over 1918 figures.