The Wrangell sentinel., 1922-08-10
Lumber Industry Growing Rapidly
 In Northwest

Col. W. B. Greeley, chief forester of the Forest Service, is spending a few days in the Northwest, having completed an inspection tour of the western national forest districts. He will deliver several addresses at va rious meetings of lumbermen of the northwest.
 Col. Greeley while in Portland gave out the following statement
 "The sawmills of the country are moving over the Plains to the Pacific Coast pretty rapidly. The last lumber census made by the Forest Service shows that the lumber cut has drop ped off in all Eastern States and in- creased in all the western States. The big southern pine country, which has hitherto been a great competitor of the Northwest, is dropping off as a lumber producer and in the mean time shipments through the Panama canal from the Columbia River, Pu- get Sound, and Gray.s Harbor ports are increasing very rapidly. Ship ment of lumber through the canal in 1921 exceeded 190 million feet and charters already held for 1922 exceed 500 million feet, indicating that the West Coast timber is very rapidly becoming an important fac tor in the eastern lumber market. The lumber census referred to above put Oregon second, with Washington first, as lumber manufacturing center; Oregon has nosed out Louis jana, which for long time held sec ond place. This is indicative of just what has taken place-saw- mills are moving from the South to the West. This industry means more in the long run to Oregon than any other state, as it has larger for country. Oregon and Washington are going to witness within the next ten years or so a tremendous increase in lumber production to supply the lumber markets of the Eastern and Central states where the local sup ply of timber is rapidly diminishing.
 This will increase heavily the business on the National Forests and put very heavy demands on the For ct Service to meet the increased cut and carry out the principle of keep ing the cut from each locality within the growing power of the Forests so as to keep the industry perpetual.
 lover two thirds of all the timber the country has left is west of the Rocky Mountains, either in the wes- tern states or Alaska, and the thing we are driving away on is that when forest industry comes out here to keep 1t just as permanent as possible. Go into every big forest region of the east nowadays and you don't find very much but cut-over land, more or less barren, great many aban- oohSu hiiiA toWAS, 6iCdt hdus abandoned sawdust piles, and a large part of the population gone too except where there are large areas of agricultural lands. We don't want to see that process repeated out here; it would be very unfortunate thing for the western states to just eat up their virgin timber resources and leave nothing in its place. AS far as the National Forests are concerned, we are going just as far as we can to keep the supply of timber perpet- ual
 And we cannot keep the timber supply perpetual unless forest fires are prevented. The protective or ganization of our forests must be in- l creased. I would like to see porna- nent provision made for airplanes for assistance in protecting the Nation | al forests, but only as a supplement tary form of protectioin. Th,y can. not take the place in our organiza- ton of lookouts and guards on the ground. Airplanes are very valua- ble, particularly when you have l smoke conditions and for fires that cannot be exactly located"
 | News dispatches have inst carried