Page:Harold Titus--Timber.djvu/133

Rh get the copper, the converter poles in the smelter where the ore was reduced, the poles under the wires, the paper around the wires in the underground cables of your own city, the wooden desk for the instrument, the turpentine in its varnish and even the rubber mouthpiece you talk into and the rubber receiver came from the trees!

"Civilization can't make a move without using forest products and our forests are going and we are doing nothing with our billions of acres of idle land that once grew forests. This land that is waste is waste in the worst sense. It won't grow food crops, won't fatten cattle or sheep, but it will grow timber!" She waved her hand downstream toward the miles of desolation that stretched between them and Pancake.

"And while we are turning our backs on it, our supply of wood is shutting down. National forests? They're remote; much of their area is inaccessible. They give us only three per cent of the timber we use now. The men that own virgin forest are butchering and have a leg to stand on because there are other men like Sim Burns using taxation as a goad. We've torn down and we have not rebuilt. We can build, and that was my father's idea; to show that we can create as fast as we destroy.

"Less than fifty, years ago this land was stripped of its pine; today it m maturing another crop. The same could have been done with any other piece that grew good trees: Just keep the fire out and nature would have done much in time. Fire, fire, fire, without end! Every summer it eats across the plains country; every summer it does its damage on cutover lands in all the timber States. It not only destroys trees, but it takes