Forest Fact, Fiction and Fires

(The folloaing i,s a copy of the rad.io address freltared, b), the Information Scr','ice, IVational Luntber trIanufacturers Association, and deliaered by XIr. I. C. Cremcr. of the Detroit Lumber Dealers Associati,on at the tr4/JR studio, Detroit, Januar! 26, 1926. This addres.s is typical of the se'L'ent\t odd. radi,o addresses the National Luntber Manufacturers Associotion has arraiged, for. So far about fifteen broadcasting stations atl the uny from Schenectadt', Netet I'orh to Ssn Francisco attd Portland,, Oregon, l,taz,e participatcd in the broadcasting.)

What our American forests need is a larger circulation of {act and a greater restriction of the fiction concerning, and the fires that rage in them.

The lvooded, or ought-to-be-r'r'ooded, land of this country is about one-fourth of our entire area. and about half of the area otrtside desert and semi-desert. Manifestly lvhat is transpiring within the boundaries of such a vast territory is of interest to all of us. Originally the forest lands were more than 800,000,000 acres, butmore than 300,000,000 have been ceded forever by the forests to the farms and other land use.

Now of these 500,00O,000 acres the government owns about 100,000,000, the farmers about 150,000,000, and the lumber, paper and other private commercial proprietors about 250,000,000 acres.

'The common fiction is that about all the timber is gone from this imperial area. The fact is that after housing and equipping a nation for three hundred years until it has now attained a population of about 120,000,000, there are still two-fifths as much standing timber as when Columbus landed. Another fiction is that rvhile we are cutting the remaining timber at a rapid rate, nothing is taking its place. The fact is that not far from one-fourth of all the standing timber is second-growth, in the sense that the land it stands on has been cut over, whether closely or roughly. Probably 4O per cent of the lumber being cut in the southern states today is from second-growth. Another bit of widely circulated fiction is that to cut the trees is to destroy the forest. The fact is that the forests are the great natulal resource that are not destroyed by use. When a mine has rvorked out its desposit, there will be no more production there until the end of time. You can cut your forests and remove the timber, over and over again, forever, and still you may have the forest. Just now stress is rightfully put on the provident use of wood material, and a certain amount of substitution is necessary. The time will certainly come when people will be urged to use replaceable wood in order to piece out the supply of some of the exhaustible minerals.

Some more fiction: Nothing is being done to put our forests into an efficient revolving fund system. The fact is that we are making much progress inthat direction. Not enough to insure us against future scarcity, it is true, but enough to give us courage and make us confident that ere long this nation will be doing its fulldutyin reforestation and forestry. The National Forests loom larger in this scheme than people knor'v. They are capable right now of yielding six billion feet of timber a year without missing it, without affecting the future volume except it be to increase it. In fact they have millions of trees that are so old and decadent that they ought to be removed to give a new crop a chance, even if for no other reason. People sometimes forget that forestry is theartof tree crop management. Manifestly, on a given area there can be no new crops while the old ones cumber the ground.

Some rvell-meaning people think that forests are rrothing but rvild parks and that, as a recent writer actually said, all the trees ought to be left in them. The fact is that while r.i'e have properly preserved some of the primeval forests for parks and ought to preserve more, rve can no more afford to let our forests as a whole be uncut than we can to leave our grains unreaped. No nation can prosper and deny itself useful products from a quarter of its extent. Forests stand for land use. Land that rvill grow trees must grow them or some other crop if it can. And the more and bigger crops, the better. As for land 'that can't grow agricultural crops, there is no productive use of it except for wood.

A strange sort of fiction, rvidely circulated, is that forest capacity will increase if you curtail the use of forest products. That is about the same as if you told a farmer that he would enlarge his dairy herd if his patrons worrld give up milk and butter. Forests are a matter of land use. If there isno market for their products nobody is going to use, that is, manage the land. Of course, the fact is, that we are norv beginning to reproduce forests because the demand for their goods makes it profitable for men to undertake forestry.

While forest fiction holds back forestry progress in a fog of ignorance and misunderstanding forest fires, incredible in number, enormous in destruction, consume the new forests, destroy the hope of future forests and wiste the wealth of the mature forests. There rvere 90,000 forest fires in 1924. Everyone of them means that human beings will undergo privation in the years to come. The forests are the concern, the support and the hope of all of us, and not the least of the farmers, who have about one-third of our forests in their woodlots. Andalot of forestry charity ought to being at lrome in those same wood lots.

The time has gone by, in the progress of the conservation movement, for calling names and hurlirig abuse; as everybody, the most hard-boiled lumberman as well as the most ethereal forest lover, has the same thought and hope at the bottom. We all want to maintain our forests. Let rrs unite to secure legislation and public conduct that will save ollr forests from fire, to inculcate sound economic principles regarding the use of forest products and to disseminate an understanding of the practical difficulties of reforestatiorr.

Upland Mill And Yard Sold

W. H. Andrervs and J. E. Sargent have purchased the holdings of the Fox-Woodsum Company, at Upland, consisting of the Fox-Woodsum Lumber Company retail yard and the Upland Planing Mill.

The trvo properties will be operated under the name of The Upland Lumber and Milling Company.

The new owners are former emDlovees of the Fox-Woodsum Company.