Tree Crops in Contrast to the Cereals of the Plains.—In many respects tree crops are to the mountains what grain crops are to the plains. Although the world's most important food products are the cereals, including rice, corn, wheat, rye, barley, and oats, they are not adapted to the mountains. They need fine, deep soil, and a wide acreage, for the average yield per acre is relatively small, being only 15 or 20 bushels in the case of wheat. In order to be profitable they must be planted and reaped by machinery. All these conditions are met in the plains, but not in the mountains.
With trees the case is different. Although people often forget it, trees furnish not only fruit, but important food crops such as nuts, olives, berries, and forage seeds. In America this source of wealth is as yet little appreciated, but in the countries around the Mediter ranean Sea it is highly important. Many kinds of trees grow quite as well upon hillsides as on plains. The rockiness of the soil makes no difference in their cultivation, for the land does not have to be plowed. Moreover, since there is no plowing the soil is not washed away so easily as where the crops are planted anew each year. The roots of the trees also hold the soil in place, while their leaves increase its depth.
Because of these conditions tree crops are highly profitable in regions of rugged relief. For example, in France and Italy rough, rocky hillsides planted with chestnut trees are sometimes worth as much per acre as our best wheat lands. Walnuts, chestnuts, beech nuts, pecan nuts, filberts, and butternuts all furnish excellent food for man and can be raised on steep slopes. So too, can the olive, which furnishes the best of vegetable oils.
Acorns, likewise, grow admirably on steep slopes. Although they are not a particularly good food for man, the Kurds in Turkey often grind them into flour for bread. For pigs, however, they are excellent. Great herds are fattened on them in the mountains of Serbia. In Spain pigs are also turned into the chestnut orchards to fatten on the nuts that have been dropped while the crop is being harvested. Sometimes the orchards are located on such steep slopes that farmers dare not turn in the large, fat pigs for fear that they may lose their footing and roll down.
Peaches and especially apples also grow excellently in rugged land. They are to-day the chief tree crop of the United States. Millions of acres, however, might be used for other tree crops and thus the mountain people might greatly increase their prosperity and at the same time add to the wealth of the country as a whole.
Lumbering as a Mountain Industry.—Trees for lumber as well as for food will always be more abundant in rugged regions than in plains. Many of the plains that are now densely populated were
once covered with trees, but to-day in temperate latitudes forests are largely restricted to rugged areas which cannot be used for farm ing. Such forest lands are found in northern New England, the Adirondacks, the Appalachians, and the northern parts of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. The Ozark region of Arkansas, parts of the Rocky Mountains, and much of the Sierra, Cascade, and Coast ranges are likewise forested. In Europe the words "forest" and "mountain" are almost synonymous. The terms "Black Forest" and "Black Mountains" are both used for the same part of Germany. Similarly in France the forests have been cut away so fully in all parts except the rugged uplands that a term like Argonne means both forest and highland.
Until the latter part of the last century lumber and firewood were abundant in the United States because new lowland areas were being cleared for settlement. Now, however, except for some of the sandy pine lands of the South, the main reliance of the country is almost wholly the forests of rugged areas. Even there so many trees have been cut and new growth is so slow that the supply of lumber does not keep pace with the demand. Hence the price of many kinds of wood is five or ten, times as much as thirty years ago. This would be an advantage to the people of the mountains, but unfortunately for them keen business men of the cities bought up enormous tracts of forests before the country in general realized their value.
Wasteful Lumbering Methods.—In the past the method of lumbering has been very wasteful. The owners of timber tracts have often desired merely to get rich as quickly as possible. Therefore they have sent crews of woodcutters into the forests with orders to cut down everything that is large enough to be of any possible use. As the large trees fall they crash into the young ones and ruin them. Only the main trunks of the trees are used. The branches and the upper third of the trunk are wasted because transportation in forests and especially in rugged regions is so difficult that it does not pay to bring anything but the best timber out to the plains. When the branches become dry, a stroke of lightning, a match, a lighted cigar, or a camper's fire may start a forest fire that burns down the timber for hundreds of square miles. This is a terrible disaster, not only because of the trees that are destroyed and the people that are rendered home less, but because the humus of the soil is burned up. In rugged re gions the remainder of the soil thus left exposed is likely to be rapidly carried away by the rain.