Trees Grow

I

THIRTY years ago the people of the United States woke up one morning and read in the daily papers the alarming announcement that they were standing right on the brink of a timber famine. The trees would all be gone in twenty years. Mr. Gifford Pinchot said so, and Mr. Pinchot was the Chief Forester of the United States. He was supposed to know what he was talking about, and unpleasant shivers ran up and down the spines of the American people as they pictured the cheerless life they and their children were doomed to lead in a country without trees. There was pretty general agreement that the days of the forests were definitely numbered.

Happily we have lived to discover that the outlook was not in fact quite so bleak and cheerless as depicted by the alarmists of thirty years ago. Back there about the turn of the century, however, there was hardly a newspaper reader who did not believe that by 1927, or 1932 at the latest, a tree would be just about as rare in the United States us in Iceland or China.

It was a dark prospect; but the dismal idea seemed to appeal to the popular imagination, and the furore created by this calamitous prediction did not die down for years — has not, indeed, totally died down yet. Mr. Pinchot was an able propagandist, and when he said famine he meant famine. He said it so loudly and so earnestly and so repeatedly that everybody — or nearly everybody — believed it; and some people still believe that a timber famine is an imminent danger.

The indisputable sincerity of Mr. Pinchot’s crusading fervor attracted enthusiastic and influential supporters. President Theodore Roosevelt dived headlong into the discussion with characteristic enthusiasm and abandon, swinging his Big Stick lustily in behalf of the Pinchot idea, and forest conservation overnight became a national issue. Everybody seemed to feel the necessity for getting into the argument in some way or other, whether he knew anything about the subject or not; and people began to feel that anybody who cut down a tree for any purpose was, on the face of things, a sort of malefactor.

Since every great crusade must have a personalized enemy to bear the brunt of the attack, the lumbermen of the country were by acclamation cast in the unpopular rôole of the villain in the play. They were the principal cutters down of trees, and by the chop-logic of the time they were naturally raised to the bad eminence of being the foremost enemies of the people. A man who mined coal or iron ore was merely developing and utilizing a great natural resource in the upbuilding of the nation; but a lumberman was a ‘tree butcher’ who was ‘exploiting the forests for private gain,’ and he was roundly denounced on every side. The conscienceless despoilers of the timber replaced Mark Hanna and other currently despised public enemies in the cartoons of the day; and the lumbermen of that era occupied about the same malodorous niche in the public contumely as did the bankers a quarter of a century later.

The foresters of that time, proceeding on the easy but erroneous theory that the exhaustion of the forests was a mere matter of obvious arithmetical computation, insisted that the lumbermen and other private timber owners must be forced to do something to ensure a supply of timber for posterity; but the timber owners were frankly practical — perhaps a little callous — in their point of view. They had their capital invested in standing timber, and the only way they could liquidate their investment was to cut down the trees and convert them into marketable materials.

They were openly skeptical about forestry. Were any of the suggested conservation measures financially feasible as part of a business enterprise which must make a profit on its invested capital, they asked; but the professional foresters either evaded the issue or else admitted frankly that they hadn’t thought of that. The lumbermen were insistent on emphasizing the necessity for their adherence to the profit motive in business, and shrugged off all emotional appeals to their sense of responsibility to posterity. ‘Cut out and get out’ was the blunt but expressive phrase describing the average lumber manufacturer’s policy. It was a policy frankly devoid of vision or constructive concern for the future, but encouraged and aggravated by a system of voracious taxes and other factors which frequently made quick liquidation imperative. A forest was looked upon as a mine, to be worked out and abandoned when its merchantable material was exhausted.

Even twenty years ago, however, there were a few lumbermen who were beginning to wake up to the fact that it is unprofitable to try to make lumber out of trees below certain minimum diameters, and so they operated on the basis of taking out only the larger trees for saw logs and leaving the young ones behind — not with any conscious idea of conservation, but solely because, from the coldblooded dollars-and-cents standpoint, they had found that they could not make any money by cutting the small trees. In following this system of ‘high grading’ they were unconsciously practising a sort of primitive, elementary forestry; but it was not on account of any sense of obligation to posterity or any hope of future reward. It was simply because it seemed to be the most immediately profitable thing to do. The fact that in leaving a few seed trees standing they were unwittingly ensuring a new crop of young trees was entirely fortuitous and unpremeditated.

II

At that time the centre of lumber production was in the South; but it seemed to be generally accepted as a fact that the timber supply of that section was dwindling so rapidly that the life of the Southern lumber industry would soon be ended. This did not arouse any particular anxiety on the part of the sawmill operators, however. They were accustomed to a migratory existence; there was still a boundless supply of virgin timber out on the Pacific Coast; and some of the big Southern mills were already cutting out and moving west. Estimates as to the life expectancy of the Southern lumber manufacturing industry varied, but as the years slipped along there was pretty general agreement on the theory that the timber in the South was nearly all gone and that a great industry which had contributed so much to the wealth and prosperity of this section would soon be a thing of the past. This fatalistic view was almost universally accepted.

An occasional Southern lumberman of vision, like the pioneering Henry Hardtner down in Louisiana, began early to think seriously about forestry in its practical aspects. Lumber operators had always seemed generally agreed that it was not possible for an investor to wait for a tree to grow — but was that true? Maybe it had been true in the North, but was it true in the South, with its strong soil, generous rainfall, and long growing season? Would a tree grow fast enough under favorable conditions to enable the owner of a big tract of timberland to treat his timber as a crop and harvest a part of it every year in a never-ending cycle?

Hard-headed skeptics hooted at the very idea, and piled up convincing figures to show that it would require a preposterously large investment in a vast number of acres of land to provide enough annual growth of timber to supply logs for a sawmill of average output. But Hardtner was skeptical of their skepticism. He noticed that on a part of his own cut-over holdings, where, by some accident, there had not been any fires for several years, there was an unusually heavy stand of thrifty young pine trees, and that they were visibly increasing in size every year. In an abandoned cotton field adjacent to his timberlands, trees had sprung up in the furrows where wind-blown seeds from the near-by pines had lodged; and in an amazingly short time they were getting saw logs from these volunteer second-growth trees in the old cotton furrows. He also discovered the interesting and important fact that the wild hogs had a keenly developed taste for the succulent roots of the longleaf pine, and that — so far as longleaf pine was concerned — the hogs were just about as destructive as fires.

Hardtner measured off some experimental plots of ground — fencing some in to protect them from hogs and cattle, and leaving others unfenced; burning some every year and protecting others from fire. In this crude outdoor laboratory he studied the effects of ground fires and grazing, and measured the growth of the trees. Gradually he began to see daylight, and foresters beat a path to his door.

Here and there in the South a few other lumber manufacturers were carrying on similar studies and practical experiments — and were being agreeably surprised at their findings. But all this took years. Back there at the turn of the century most lumbermen never gave a serious thought to forestry.

Then, shortly after the World War, something happened that started people — especially timberland owners — thinking. Several of the Southern states, which were supposed to have cut out all their timber years ago, began to show up in the lumber statistics with figures showing greatly increased production. Everybody knew in a vague sort of way that a part of this was coming from new, small mills which had sprung up all over the South, generally referred to contemptuously as ‘peckerwood’ or ‘coffeepot’ mills; but where were these mills getting their timber supply? How could these supposedly cut-out states possibly produce so much lumber?

The question seemed unanswerable, but the answer was simple: Trees grow. Trees grow, and they had been growing right along through the years since the big mills had exhausted the then available supply of saw timber and had moved on. When an increased demand for lumber made sawmilling again attractive, new mills popped up in this second-growth timber and began to produce lumber from trees which had grown up to saw-timber size while nobody was looking.

Then it began to dawn on foresters and lumbermen alike that in their consideration of the problems involved in the question of the future timber supply they had been overlooking that one big outstanding fact. It was so obvious that they hadn’t been able to see it. As the professional foresters expressed it in their ponderous terminology: ‘The one, unique, inherent quality which distinguishes the forests from all other natural resources is their capacity for self-perpetualion ‘ — which, reduced to words of one syllable, simply means: ‘Trees grow.’

Everybody, of course, knows that trees grow. The lumbermen knew it. The foresters knew it. But they all seemed to lose sight of this simple but deeply significant fact while they were arguing the abstract problems associated with the theory of forestry and conservation. Or, if they did happen to think about it at all, they generally dismissed it with the conclusion that tree growth was too slow to have any practical or commercial significance.

But now they began to ask themselves searching questions. Just how much did they really know about trees and forestry anyhow? Especially, how much did they know about the vital factors of timber supply and the rate of growth? It had to be admitted that up to that time all estimates of how long the timber supply of the United States would last were but little more than rough approximations based on more or less accurate guesses as to how much timber there was standing in the country. Census Bureau figures showed exactly how much lumber was being cut and used every year; but there had never been any official or reliable figures regarding the total supply of timber and its yearly rate of growth. Without such figures it was manifestly impossible to make anything like an accurate estimate of how long the supply would last, but the alarmists had got over that hurdle by boldly making the glib assertion that we were using our timber five times as fast as it was growing; and for a long time this was accepted at face value and freely repeated without any embarrassing questions as to how they knew how fast it was growing.

The more people thought about it, however, the stranger it seemed that nothing had ever been done in the direction of finding out exactly how much timber there was in the United States, how fast it was growing, and how the rate of growth compared with the rate of consumption of forest products. Sentiment began to develop in favor of some sort of nation-wide inventory of our timber resources, a kind of tree census that would provide a sound taking-off point for a practical policy of forestry. Support for this sensible proposal finally grew to the point where in 1928 Congress was prevailed upon to make the necessary appropriation, and in 1932 the official Federal Forest Survey finally got under way in the principal timber-growing areas of the United States.

III

As is easy to realize, such a survey was an undertaking of staggering proportions. In the first place, there were no past records to go by, no precedents by which to be guided. It was a new kind of endeavor, and methods had to be devised as it progressed. Furthermore, the very nature of the work — a veritable counting of the noses of the trees — precluded the possibility of speed. In the South the field work alone required more than three years, as groups of timber cruisers with compass and chain trudged painfully over the hills and through the swamps gathering the tremendous volume of information which was dumped into the statistical hoppers of the district offices of the United States Forest Service, under whose direction the Survey was conducted. The Survey for the entire country has not yet been completed; but in the lower South the work has just about been finished, and it is now possible to make some enlightening — and surprising — deductions.

The area included in what the forestry officials call ‘the lower South’ does not embrace the entire South by any means, but is an arbitrarily selected area comprising the states of Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, the timbered region of eastern Texas and Oklahoma, three quarters of Arkansas, and that very small strip of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri immediately adjacent to the Mississippi River. This, it will be noticed, excludes all of North and South Carolina and Virginia, as well as the greater portion of the territory of the other states partially covered. These states, however, are now being surveyed, and the results will be announced later. The total area embraced in this ‘lower South’ is 213 million acres, of which 122 million are classified as productive forest land. The entire region south of the Mason-Dixon line, the section usually referred to as ‘the South,’ includes 380 million acres, of which about 238 million are forested. The forest figures for the entire South, therefore, may be roughly computed as correspondingly greater than the Survey statistics here discussed.

Probably the most surprising fact developed by the Survey is the extent to which the lands of the South are now covered with growing timber. Although the South is generally considered to be an agrarian region, almost 60 per cent of the land surface of this section of the country is still in forest growth and less than 30 per cent of it is cultivated. Furthermore, it appears from the Survey that the area under forest in the South is expanding rather than contracting; and Survey officials say it is reasonable to believe that at least 60 per cent of the land surface of the South will be devoted to the growing of timber for generations to come.

Within this ‘lower South’ area, the Survey reveals, there is now standing the enormous total of 264 billion board feet of saw timber (trees thirteen inches and up in diameter in hardwoods, nine inches and up in pine), not to mention the stand of trees of under-saw-timber size to the extent of 454 million cords, the saw timber of tomorrow— or a total of about 1333 million cords in all trees five inches and up in diameter. (The trees under five inches in diameter are not considered at all, although they are the potential growing stock - the backlog of the supply.) This astonishingly huge amount of standing timber, it should be borne in mind, is the natural residue after more than a century of unrestrained use of the forests, with little or no thought of the future, and with a minimum of protection from the destructive effect of annual fires.

What is even more eye-opening and encouraging is the information developed regarding the rate at which the South’s forests are reproducing themselves, and the relation of growth to use. Compilation of these Survey figures shows that in saw timber alone the rate of growth is now almost if not quite equal to the drain; and when all of the growing timber and all of the drain are taken into consideration the situation changes for the better, with a total annual increment of 3,370,060 cubic feet and drain of 2,962,510 cubic feet.

In short, in the South as a whole, right now the trees are growing faster than they are being used.

It should be explained that the Forest Survey uses the word ‘drain’ to include all forms of forest depletion, not merely commercial utilization. For example, in 1936 the total growth of saw timber in the entire South was 20,403 million board feet. The total saw timber cut for lumber amounted to only 13,277 million board feet; but there was sufficient additional ‘drain’ — including fire and insect destruction— to bring the total depletion up to a point that left a slight deficit between growth and drain. With improvement in fire protection and in forest management, the total annual growth of saw timber in the South could easily be made to exceed the drain, leaving a substantial surplus annual increment for the support of new forest products industries. In fact, the Forest. Service estimates that the Southern pine lands alone are capable of growing double the amount of wood that is now being cut from them.

Stripped of technicalities, and with the living kernel of significance dug out of its dry, statistical husk, all this means simply that in the South the manufacture of lumber and other forest products may be maintained at the current rate of production indefinitely. It means that, contrary to general belief, the Southern lumber industry is not an industry doomed to early extinction, but is in process of being transformed into a permanent part of the nation’s industrial fabric. It can be a permanent source of wealth; a permanent provider of employment for labor; a permanent producer of profits for investors; a permanent source of tonnage for the railroads and other carriers; a permanent payer of taxes to the states and local communities.

The Southern forests need not be regarded as a mine, to be exhausted and abandoned; their annual increment may be harvested on the basis of a renewable+ crop, year after year.

The far-reaching significance of this and its great importance to the country as a whole will be realized when we remember that the South leads all other sections of the United States in the area of its privately owned commercial forest land, with 44 per cent of the nation’s total and with 58 per cent of the stand of growing timber. In 1938 the South produced 70 per cent of all the nation’s hardwood lumber and 41 per cent of its softwood. As an industry, the forests of the South rank second only to agriculture in importance; and Southern farmers have an annual income of 82 million dollars from their timber. The forest industries of the South support close to a million people, employing 24 per cent of all persons employed in manufacturing, and pay 19 per cent of all wages paid in manufacturing industries in the South. With the development of the pulp and paper industry in this section these totals will be measurably increased — and the South contains 42 per cent of the volume of all pulpwood species in the United States, a volume which is increasing through natural growth more rapidly there than in any other region.

The prospect of losing all this was a tragedy affecting not merely the South but the whole country. The prospect of its permanence is good news, — frontpage news, — although so far it has remained buried in statistical reports.

Nor is it all just a dream or a theory — something to be attained in the future, maybe. Already there is to be seen rapidly increasing evidence of an actual realization of this idea of permanence in the operations of Southern lumber manufacturing companies. ‘Cut out and get out’ has become as antiquated a slogan as ‘Fifty-four forty or fight.’ Lumber manufacturers in the South are changing their whole point of view. Their eyes have been opened to the fact that trees grow, and they are beginning to cash in on it. Already there are a number of big operators who are working strictly on a ‘sustained yield’ basis — that is, they have balanced their rate of lumber production with the rate of growth of their timber, achieving an equilibrium which will provide them with a never-ending supply of raw material. Today 85.8 per cent of the commercial timberland of the South is rated by the foresters as being ‘in productive condition,’ and more and more of the timber owners are exercising some degree of control over cutting practices, with sustained yield as their goal.

Foresters, too, have swung around to a new and broader point of view. Most of t hem are no longer so much inclined to scold the lumbermen and private timber owners for their sins of commission and omission. Their discussions of forestry have taken on a new note of practicality. A typical article by a government forester in a lumber trade paper recently stated, ‘The crucial question in the commercial application of any constructive forestry program is “Will it pay?”’ and went on to outline a program which ‘may be expected to yield an annual profit of one dollar per acre.’ When a forester starts talking about profits, that’s news; and when he starts speaking in terms of dollars and cents he attracts the attention of the lumberman who was looking out the window while he was talking about æsthetics and the duty to posterity.

A new and acute angle to the forestry problem has been created recently by the suddenly increased development of the pulp and paper industry in the South. This is a spectacular and widely acclaimed accession to its manufacturing and industrial resources, and correspondingly welcome; but the South’s timber supply, although abundant, is not inexhaustible, and it cannot support an unlimited increase in the present drain. Fortunately, Southern paper and pulp manufacturers are taking steps in the direction of conservation which are very promising. Their plant investments are too big for any cut-out-and-get-out plan of operation. They mean to be there from now on. Last year they organized the Southern Pulpwood Conservation Association, which has formulated a definite and comprehensive program of conservative practices; and the members of this association have pledged themselves to use the South’s timber supply in such a way that the supply will be perpetuated rather than depleted.

If they do operate on this basis, and if there is more effective fire protection and less proscriptive taxation, it can be said positively that there is enough timber in the South today, properly managed, to maintain these new paper mills and the old lumber companies, too, at their present rate of production. There are problems to be met and solved, to be sure; but these problems are not insurmountable difficulties. What has been done already shows what can be done in the future. The billion-dollar forest-products industries of the South need not dwindle and fade away to the vanishing point, leaving behind them a tragic trail of monumental sawdust piles, gaunt skeletons of deserted villages, and a stranded population. They can eat their cake and have it too — a paradox which can be simply explained: Trees grow.

FOR ATLANTIC READERS AND WRITERS

THEAtlantic Monthly, in association with the Moses Kimball Fund of Boston, announces a prize of $500 which will be awarded to the author of the best essay on ‘Citizenship, Its Privileges and Responsibilities,’ submitted on or before August 25, 1940. The essays are limited to 1500 words; they will be judged by a committee consisting of the editorial staff of the Atlantic Monthly and a Trustee of the Moses Kimball Fund. The judges reserve the right to reject any or all manuscripts, but it is hoped that the prize-winning paper will be available for publication in the October issue. All rights to the winning manuscript will revert to the Moses Kimball Fund for the Promotion of Good Citizenship.