During the earlier stages of the industry's growth, the hardwoods, products of the °broad leaf" trees, such as the oaks, maples, birches, elms, basswood, hickory, gum, etc., received little consideration. In the white pine sections of Michigan and Wisconsin, later to become famous for their maple and birch, these woods were ignored by the early white pine manufac turers, in most instances, but the development of innumerable uses for hardwoods resulted in the rapid growth of what has become prac tically a separate branch of the lumber manu facturing industry, producing hardwood lumber. This branch of the industry is even more widely scattered than the soft wood branch and has developed methods, practices and a trade termi nology of its own.
The most outstanding point of difference between the softwood and hardwood branches of the industry is to be found in the fact that the most important use of the softwobds and the use on which the softwood branch is really based is as a structural material. For struc tural uses, softwood lumber is ordinarily mar keted, either rough or dressed, through lumber dealers who retail the commodity to building contractors and other consumers in substantially the same form in which it comes from the manufacturer. Hardwoods, on the other hand, are marketed chiefly to woodworking industries, such as door and millwork establishments, im plement and vehicle manufacturers, the furni ture and musical instrument trades, etc. Thus, with hardwoods, there is usually a process of further manufacture after the lumber leaves the sawmill and before it is ready for use by the consumer. It seldom reaches its consumer des tination through the medium of the retail lum ber dealer.
Timber Supply of the. United States.— Foresters have disagreed sharply in their esti mates of the actual amount of standing timber in the United States, it having been demon strated that the early estimates were far under the mark and that the predictions of an im pending timber famine which were given great prominence a few years ago were, for the time being, without foundation. In his book, 'Lum ber and Its Uses,) Royal S. Kellogg, lately of the United States Forest Service, gives the fol lowing estimates as representing the minimum acreage and stand of timber: These estimates include all forest resources, publicly and privately owned. Of the publicly owned forests, largely embraced in the National Forest Lands held by the United States gov ernment, accurate estimates of area are obtain able. On 30 June 1917, the Forest Service, which is a bureau of the Department of Agri culture, estimated the aggregate area of the national forests at 155,166,619 acres.
Aside from the national forests, practically all of the forest area in which lumbering operations are proceeding is being managed without regard to reforestation, so that it might be assumed that the life of the country's pri vately-owned forests may be determined by dividing the total timber supply by the rate of normal timber cut and making proper al lowance for the growth of the immature timber now standing. This method, however, fails to
yield accurate results because it fails to take into account a large amount of natural re forestation which is bound to occur in cut-over areas that are not suitable for agriculture or stock-raising and that therefore afford an op portunity for regrowth, and also, because it ignores the fact that many substitutes are being found for lumber and are tending to reduce the per capita rate of consumption more rapidly in proportion than the population is increas ing.
If no precautionary measures should be taken during the next 25 years, it is not im probable that the people of the United States would find themselves without an adequate tim ber supply in 75 years and that by the end of a century all of the privately-held timber would have been cut. Private enterprise cannot be depended upon to engage in timber growth because the process of growing trees is too slow to appear attractive to investors and also because the various States have levied unrea sonably heavy and unscientific taxation on standing timber to such an extent that owners have been driven to rapid cutting rather than to conservation. It is probable, however, that the development of wider public knowledge of the problem of timber supply which may be expected as the result of the opening of schools of forestry in many of the leading universities and the consequent increase in the influence of the professional forester will result in a de mand for a forestry policy, put into operation through the Federal government, the purpose of which will be to insure against the ultimate timber famine which otherwise might be ex pected. Such a policy necessarily will involve the co-operation of the States in arriving at an equitable and scientific method of taxing timber as a crop when cut, rather than on the present annual basis and will also necessitate more complete control over the protection from fire of those varieties of timber that are readily susceptible to fire damage and in which heavy fire losses occur practically every year. The Forest Service has demonstrated that timber can be protected against fire by two principal means: Education of the public to avoid care lessness in the woods which each year results disastrously, and the installation of efficient pa trol systems that discover fires in the incipient stages and control them before they become conflagrations. The extension of such methods to private holdings as well as to reforestation projects operating under subsidy or some other form of governmental encouragement will eventually be necessary.