Evening star., 1938-01-02
By William 4thevf0n
DuPnp.

zach of us here in the United
States, whether he knows it or
not. is the outright owner of piece
OF land half as big as a city block,
pretty much covered with trees, but
perhaps with group of burly stumps.
bit OF grassy open space, a pile of
rocks and a touch of water on it.
Whether We are big business men
In cities with rows of buttons on our
desks to press. village grocers counting
the eggs our farm customers bring in
or youngsters with our books on straps
hurrying away to school, each of us
shares in the ownership of his Gov
ernment's far-f1ung national forests.
where the ever-present thought is that
OF growing trees
This land is ours, though we live in
q tenement and never see a chipmunk
scurrying along rotting log, or on
the prairie and never hear the wind
signing through our tall pine trees, or
on water front where the odor of
fish is more to be expected than that
Of honeysuckle.
There are l75.000.0O0 acres of land
IN the national forests and 130, 900, 900
American citizens. Thus it turns out
that each of us has wooded estate
OF an acre and third Block this
out on the ground and you will find
that 1t turns out that you have a
formal and precise piece of land that
Is about 200 feet wide and 300 feet
long.
If you had this land in a city, you
could build eight row houses with a
bit Of back yard and a garage across
each end Of it. If you had it in the
country, 1t would be a fair-sized
garden in which to grow the family
spinach and rutabagas. Out there
IN the forest, along with the land be-
longing to the rest of the multitude
OF us, it is serving very important
purpose, indeed. In fact, it is serving
a number Of purposes. 1t is vastly
important to all the people. 1t is so
important, in fact. that many persons
IN high positions think and talk about
it very great deal. It is so i'm
portant that 1t seems that, as owners
OF these bits Of far-aung soil, it should
be our business to know what Is hap
pening on them.
THE national forests are very widely
scattered, indeed, and have an
endless variety of trees on them. For
a thousand miles along the Alaskan
coast, for example, there are splendid
Sitka spruce trees which furnish the
lightest and strongest of timbers for
airplane wings. In the swampy lands
along the Gulf Coast, where alligators
sleep IN the sun, sweet gum and
expresses grow. A redwood tree that
is the tallest living thing in the world,
reaching 1854 feet into the sky, stands
close to the Pacific in California.
Not long ago the Farest Service had
q single poplar tree in North Carolina
that it sold to the furniture makers
for $3.50. Red cedars grow Is feet
across and unbelievably tall out in
the State of Washington. Black wal
nut for cabinetmaking is scattered
over Ohio and States thereabouts.
Royal palms with leaves 10 feet long
rear their crowns in Florida, nut
bearing pecan trees flourish in the
Mississippi Valley and beautiful blue
spruce bear the SHOWS of the high
Western mountains. A pine called
"ponderosa," that can get along in
somewhat dry regions, makes up vast
forests in the Rocky Mountains and
beyond that reaches from Canada to
Mexico. Douglas fir forests of un-
believable value and beauty overrun
the northwestern corner of the Ma
ton.
These last two make up the most
important virgin forests remaining in
the United States. They now furnish
more than half the lumber that the
10000, 900 people use.
There are two main groups of trees
those that have needles and those that
have broad leaves. The trees with
needles, like the pines, the spruces,
the frs, all put their seeds in cones,
and so are called conifers. The lum-
Der industry has another name for
them. It calls them the softwood
trees.
All the broad-leaf trees, like the
oaks, elms, naples and hickories, most
Of which drop their leaves in the
autumn, on the other hand, are called
hArdwoods. These are the two main
divisions Of the tree world.
MOST of the eastern half of the
~A United States was in the begin
ming covered with timber, but by and
large the trees were cut down as the
country was settled and TUNED into
farms. In the western half of the
country there was much open coun-
try-prairie and desert-but part of it
also was covered with very excellent
forests. In the beginning there were
three times as many acres in the East
that grew trees as in the West. The
Western forests, however, have had
much less cutting and now they have
10 times as much virgin timber as the
East.
The national forests did not begin
to take form until about the begin
ming Of the present century. BY that
time all the land in the East was
privately owned. Practically all Of