Page:EB1911 - Volume 10.djvu/679

Rh fires have had more to do with the character and distribution of forests in America than any other factor except rainfall. With an annual range over thousands of square miles, in many portions of the United States they occur regularly year after year on the same ground. Trees whose thick bark or abundant seeding gives them peculiar powers of resistance, frequently owe their exclusive possessions of vast areas purely to the action of fire. On the economic side fire is equally influential. The probability, or often the practical certainty, of fire after the first cut, commonly determines lumbermen to leave no merchantable tree standing. Forest fires are thus the most effective barriers to the introduction of forestry. Excessive taxation of timber land is another of almost equal effect. Because of it lumbermen hasten to cut, and afterwards often to abandon, lands which they cannot afford to hold. This evil, which only the progress of public sentiment can control, is especially prevalent in certain portions of the white pine belt.

Forest Associations.—Public sentiment in favour of the protection of forests is now widespread and increasingly effective throughout the United States. As the general understanding of the objects and methods of forestry becomes clearer, the tendency, formerly very marked, to confound ornamental tree planting and botanical matters with forestry proper is rapidly growing less. At the same time, the number and activity of associations dealing with forest matters is increasing with notable rapidity. There are now about thirty such associations in the United States. One of these, the Society of American Foresters, is composed exclusively of professional foresters. The American Forestry Association is the oldest and largest. It has been influential in preparing the ground work of popular interest in forestry, and especially in advocating and securing the adoption of the federal forest reservation policy, the most important step yet taken by the national government. It publishes as its organ a monthly magazine called Forestry and Irrigation. The Pennsylvania Forestry Association has been instrumental in placing that state in the forefront of forest progress. Its organ is a bi-monthly publication called Forest Leaves. Other states which have associations or societies of special influence in forest matters are California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Colorado, New Hampshire, Georgia and Oregon. Arbor Day, instituted in Nebraska in 1872 as a day for shade-tree planting by farmers who had settled on the treeless prairies, has been taken up as a means of interesting school children in the planting of trees, and has spread until it is now observed in every state and territory. It continues to serve an admirable purpose.

Lumbering.—According to the census report for 1905 the capital invested in logging operations in the United States was $90,454,596, the number of employés engaged 146,596, and their wages $66,990,000; sawmills represented an invested capital of $381,621,000, and employed 223,674 persons, whose wages were $100,311,000, while planing mills represented a capital of $222,294,000 and employed 132,030 persons whose wages were $66,434,000.

All the operations of the lumber trade in the United States are controlled, and to no small degree determined, by the peculiar unit of measure which has been adopted. This unit, the board-foot, is generally defined as a board one foot long, one foot wide and one inch thick, but in reality it is equivalent to 144 cub. in. of manufactured lumber in any form. To purchase logs by this measure one must first know about what each log will yield in one-inch boards. For this purpose a scale or table is used, which gives the contents of logs of various diameters and lengths in board feet. Under such a standard the purchaser pays for nothing but the saleable lumber in each log, the inevitable waste in slabs and sawdust costing him nothing.

The table at foot gives the estimated consumption of wood for certain purposes in the United States in 1906.

In addition to this amount, an immense quantity of wood is used each year for fuel, posts and other domestic purposes, and the total annual consumption is not less than 20 billion cub. ft.

The years 1890 to 1906 were marked by rapid changes in the rank of the important timber trees with reference to the amount of timber cut, and a shifting of the important centres of production. Among coniferous trees, white pine has yielded successively to yellow pine and Douglas fir, while the scene of greatest activity has shifted from the Northern forest to the Southern, and from there is rapidly shifting to the Pacific Coast. The total cut of coniferous lumber has increased steadily, but that of the hardwoods is falling off, and in 1906 it was 15% less than in 1899, while inferior hardwoods are gradually assuming more and more importance, and the scene of greatest activity has passed from the middle west to the south and the Appalachian region.

Conifers.—The coniferous supply of the country is derived from four forest regions: (1) The Northern forest; (2) the Southern forest; (3) the Pacific Coast forest; and (4) the Rocky Mountain forest.

1. The Northern forest was long the chief source of the coniferous lumber production in the United States. The principal timber tree of this region is the white pine, usually known in Europe as the Weymouth pine. It has an average height when mature of 110 ft., with a diameter a little less than 3 ft., but the virgin timber is approaching exhaustion. White pine was one of the first trees to be cut extensively in the United States, and Maine, the pine tree state, was at first the centre of production. In 1851 the cut of white pine on the Penobscot river was 144 million ft., that of spruce 14 million and of hemlock 11 million. Thirty years later the pine cut had sunk to 23 million, spruce had risen to 118 million, and hemlock had passed pine by a million feet. Meanwhile, the centre of production had passed from the north woods to the Lake States, and for many years this region was the scene of the most vigorous lumbering activity in the world. The following figures show the cut for the Lake