The gazette-times. [volume] (Heppner, Or.) 1912-1925, 1922-12-28
Timber Costs and Stacker Acres Our
Forest Problem Says Greeley.

LNNlN NNat mahSS lG lOISSl pTOOlem OF the UNI
ted States more clear, says Colonel William B.
Greeley in the annual report of the Forest Service,
United States Department of Agriculture, issued
recently.
The problem, continues Colonel Greeley's state
ment' has two main features. TIE first feature is
the rising cost OF timber products, which is due
primarily to heavier transportation charges from
more and more distant sources of supply. The cut
of lumber is decreasing in all the Eastern States;
in practically every state west of the Great Plains
it is increasing. The large sawmills of the coun-
thy are in full migration westward to the last great
virgin timber supply of the Pacific Coast. During
the past 80 years the pineries of the South have
been the mainstay of the density populated Central
and Eastern States for the softwood lumber used
in building, in general construction, and in many
manufactures. Their cut is dwindline. Every
year scores of-sawmills are dismantled.
The rapid increase in lumber shipments through
the Panama Canal foreshadows the time, in the
near future, when the principal source of softwood
lumber for the entire Nation will have shifted TO
the west coast and the average freight cost paid BY
the home builder or manufacturer will have ad-
vanced to a new and higher level.
When the coniferous virgin timber Of the far
West is exhausted nj its turn, if the principal source
of supply shifts to Siberia or South America the
transportation conditions which control the present
lumber market will become different only in de-
gree. Further, as the sources Of supply become
more restricted and more distant from the princi.
pal centers OF consumption, opportunities for COM
petition are %leSsened; and temporary shortages due
to bad seasons, labor troubles, or congestion of
transportation facilities are more probable and
more severe.
Thus the conditions of the trade become more
favorable to monopolistic control, to violent mar
ket fluctuations, and to high prices. And we are
dealing with a basic raw material, as widely used
and as necessary to national existence as coal.
The second feature of our forest problem is the
unproductive condition of immense areas of land
which are not adapted to agriculture.
The amount of unproductive land left in the wake
of the sawmills or abandoned by the farmer has as
sumed enormous proportions. our merchantable
timber is being cut at the rate Of four or five mill
} ion acres annually, and enormous areas of logged-of
land have accumulated which are not fit for cult
, walton but on which little or no new timber is being
/ grown. The extent to which these millions of acres
of ide land have been swelled by the ebbing tide of
cultivation in many states is not generily gealized
t In Is of the Eastern and Central States the improv-
, ed farm land shrang at the rate Of 100000 acres a
a year.
: There can be no question as to the steady shrink
4 age in the cultivated area of a considerable number
S Of the oldest and most ~populous states and the con-
sequent lapse of large areas Of land into partial or
i complete idleness. What to do with unused and I'm
: productive land is one of the most fundamental &C.
onomic and social problems Of the United States.
S Including burned and cut-over areas and aband-
oned fields which once grew timber, one third of the
: soil of the union is forest land. And three fourths
1 Of it lies in the Mississippi Valley and eastward to
e the Atlantic coast, in the very states having the
: densest population and the largest consumption of
: timber products. Over 40 per cent of New York
: and Pennsylvania is forest land. From As to 10
per cent of the area of each Of the South Atlantic
: and Gulf States is forest land.
e The use of these vast areas of nontillable land
!, for growing successive crops of timber would kill two
a birds with one stone. 1t would insure ultimately a
I supply of forest products adequate for all national
requirements; and it would go far toward maintain
n ing a virile rural population and stable rural COM
munities in the region Of inferior soil and limited
t agriculture.
: The working out of a vast economic problem of
t this character will necessarily require a long time
: and can be only partially accomplished or %influenc-
ed by public action.