Page:Statesman's Year-Book 1913.djvu/525

 PRODUCTION AND INDUSTRY 403

II. Forestry.

The original forests of the United States containing saw timber covered about 1,300,000 square miles, besides probably 150,000 square miles more of scrubby forest and brush land, chiefly in the West. According to present standards of utilisation, this original forest contained about 5,200 billion board feet of saw timber. Cutting, clearing, and fire have reduced the forest area to al)out 860,000 square miles, or about one-fourth of the total area of the country, and the stand to some 2,500 billion feet of merchantable timber.

There are five principal forest regions. The Northern Forest covers northern New England ond New York, northern Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, and most of southern New York and Pennsylvania, with a southern extension along the Appalachian Mountains as far as northern Georgia. It is composed chiefly of softwoods, with a considerable admixture of hardwoods. The Southern Forest, mainly softwoods, extends from Chesa- peake Bay through the Atlantic and Gulf States into eastern Texas, with an extension northward through western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma into Missouri. The Central Forest, mainly composed of hardwoods, originally covered southern New England and the Hudson and Mohawk valleys, the Piedmont Plateau, and the country from the Appalachians to the prairies. The two remaining forest regions are those of the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Coast, both made up almost entirely of softwoods {i.e., conifers).

The Northern Forest is estimated to contain about 145,000 square miles and 300 billion feet of timber ; the Southern Forest, 235,000 square miles and 500 billion feet ; the Central Forest, 200,000 square miles and 300 billion feet ; the Rocky Mountain Forest, 155,000 square miles and 300 billion feet ; and the Pacific Coast Forest, 125,000 square miles and 1,100 billion feet.

The present rate of cutting is three times the annual growth of the forests, and the heavy demand for timber is steadily pushing the great centres of the lumber industry toward the south and west. Twenty billion cubic feet of wood are taken from the forests yearly, including waste in logging and manufacture. In a single year 90 million cords of firewood, 45 billion board feet of lumber, 150 million ties, If billion staves, over 125 million sets of heading, nearly 300 million barrel hoops, 3f million cords of native pulp wood, 165 million cubic feet of round mine timbers, and 1 J million cords of wood for distillation are used. In 1911, over 4 million cords of wood were used in the manufacture of paper, of which 940,000 cords were imported from Canada. A larger drain upon the forest resources is made by the demand for the railroad ties, of which 148,231,000, equivalent to nearly 5 billion board feet, were used in 1910.

Since 1905 the State of Washington has led in lumber production ; in 1910 Louisiana, Mississippi, Oregon, Wisconsin, Texas, Arkansas, North Caro- lina, Michigan, and Virginia followed in the order named. Yellow pine now holds first place in the cut, with 14| billion feet in 1910 ; Douglns fir of the North-Avest second, with nearly 5^ billion feet ; oak, third, with 3^ billion feet ; and white pine fourth, with less than 4 billion feet. The present area of merchantable yellow pine forests in the Southern States is about 200,000 square miles, with a stand of about 500 billion feet.

The census of 1909 reports 40,671 lumber establishments with a capital of 1,176,675,000 dollars, using raw material valued at 508,118,000 dollars, and turning out a finished product worth 1,156,129,000 dollars. Four-fifths of the lumber cut is from conifei s.

Four-fifths of the standing timber, of the country is privately owned. Forests publicly owned consist chiefly of holdings of the National Govern- ment. These include National forests, National parks, Indian reservations,

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