Estimates of this kind are almost inevitably misleading. For example,
it is certain that the rate of consumption of timber will increase
enormously in the future, as it has in the past, so long as supplies
remain to draw upon. Exact knowledge of many other factors is needed
before closely accurate results can be obtained. The figures cited are,
however, sufficiently reliable to make it certain that the United States
has already crossed the verge of a timber famine so severe that its
blighting effects will be felt in every household in the land. The rise
in the price of lumber which marked the opening of the present century
is the beginning of a vastly greater and more rapid rise which is to
come. We must necessarily begin to suffer from the scarcity of timber
long before our supplies are completely exhausted.
It is well to remember that there is no foreign source from which we can
draw cheap and abundant supplies of timber to meet a demand per capita
so large as to be without parallel in the world, and that the suffering
which will result from the progressive failure of our timber has been
but faintly foreshadowed by temporary scarcities of coal.
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