In the distance a rumbling, rushing sound is heard. It is the fire roaring in the tree tops on the hill sides, several miles from town. This is no longer a number of small fires, slowly smouldering away to eat up a fallen log; nor little dancing flames running along the dry litter on the ground, trying to creep up the bark of a tree, where the lichens are thick and dry, but presently falling back exhausted. The wind has risen, fanning the flames on all sides, till they leap higher and higher, reaching the lower branches of the standing timber, enveloping the mighty boles of cork pine in a sheet of flame, seizing the tall poles of young trees and converting them into blazing beacons that herald the approach of destruction.
Fiercer and fiercer blows the wind, generated by the fire itself as it sends currents of heated air rushing upward into infinity. Louder and louder the cracking of the branches as the flames seize one after the other, leaping from crown to crown, rising high above the tree tops in whirling wreaths of fire, and belching forth clouds of smoke hundreds of feet still higher. As the heated air rises more and more, rushing along with a sound like that of a thousand foaming mountain torrents, burning brands are carried along, whirling on across the firmament like evil spirits of destruction, bearing the fire miles away from its origin, then falling among the dry brush heaps of windfall or slashing, and starting another fire to burn as fiercely as the first. * * *
There is something horrible in the slow, steady approach of a top fire. It comes on with the pitiless determination of unavoidable destiny, not faster than a man can walk. But there is no stopping it. You cannot fight a fire that seizes tree top after tree top, far above your reach, and showers down upon the pigmy mortals that attempt to oppose it an avalanch of burning branches, driving them away to escape the torture and death that threatens them. (Bruncken, _American Forests and Forestry_, 106-109.)
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 108. Fighting Forest Fire. _U. S. Forest Service._]
Real forest fires are not usually put out; men only try to limit them.
A common method of limitation is to cut trenches thru the duff so that the fire cannot pa.s.s across, Fig. 108. In serious cases back fires are built on the side of the paths or roads or trenches toward the fire, in the expectation that the two fires will meet. In such cases great care has to be taken that the back fire itself does not escape. Small fires, however, can sometimes be beaten out or smothered with dirt and sand, since water is usually unavailable.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 109. Fire Lane. Worcester Co., Ma.s.s. _U. S. Forest Service._]
But "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." One of the best of these preventions is a system of fire lanes. Even narrow paths of dirt will stop an ordinary fire. Roads, of course, are still better.
Systems of fire lanes, Fig. 109, are made great use of in Europe and British India. Belts of hardwood trees are also cultivated along railways, and to break up large bodies of conifers.
If in lumbering, the slash were destroyed or even cut up so as to lie near the ground and rot quickly, many fires would be prevented.
Some states, as New York, have a fairly well organized system of fire wardens, who have the authority to draft as much male help as they need at $2.00 a day to fight forest fires. Unfortunately "ne"er-do-wells" sometimes set fire to the woods, in order to "make work" for themselves. Much preventive work is also done by educating the public in schools and by the posting of the fire notices,[1] Fig.
110.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 110. Look out for Fire. Rules and Laws.]
DESTRUCTIVE LUMBERING.
How the reckless and destructive methods of lumbering common in America came into vogue, is worth noting.[2]
The great historical fact of the first half century of our country was the conquest of the wilderness. That wilderness was largely an unbroken forest. To the early settler, this forest was the greatest of barriers to agriculture. The crash of a felled tree was to him a symbol of advancing civilization. The woods were something to be got rid of to make room for farms, Fig. 111. In Virginia, for example, where the soil was soon exhausted by tobacco culture and modern fertilizers were unknown, there was a continual advance into the woods to plant on new and richer land. The forest was also full of enemies to the settler, both animals and Indians, and was a dreaded field for fire. So there grew up a feeling of hate and fear for the forest.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 111. Forest Giving Place to Farm Land. North Carolina. _U. S. Forest Service._]
More than that the forest seemed exhaustless. The clearings were at first only specks in the woods, and even when they were pushed farther and farther back from the seacoast, there was plenty of timber beyond.
The idea that the area of this forest could ever be diminished by human hands to any appreciable extent so that people would become afraid of not having woodland enough to supply them with the needed lumber, would have seemed an utter absurdity to the backwoodsman. * * * Thus the legend arose of the inexhaustible supply of lumber in American forests, a legend which only within the last twenty years has given place to juster notions. (Bruncken, p. 57.)
This tradition of abundant supply and the feeling of hostility to the forest lasted long after the reasons for them had disappeared. When we remember that every farm in the eastern United States, is made from reclaimed forest land and that for decades lumber was always within reach up the rivers, down which it was floated, it is not strange that reckless and extravagant methods of cutting and using it prevailed.
Following the settler came the lumberman, who continued the same method of laying waste the forest land. The lumber market grew slowly at first, but later developed by leaps and bounds, until now the output is enormous.
Lumbering in America has come to be synonymous with the clearing off of all the marketable timber, regardless of the future. It treats the forest as tho it were a mine, not a crop, Fig. 112. Since 1880 the total cut has been over 700,000,000 feet, enough to make a one inch floor over Vermont, Ma.s.sachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware, or one-half of the State of New York, an area of 25,000 square miles.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 112. Redwood Forest Turned Into Pasture.
California. _U. S. Forest Service._]
Other countries, too, have devastated their forests. Portugal has a forest area of only 5 per cent. of the total land area, Spain and Greece, each 13 per cent., Italy 14 per cent. and Turkey 20 per cent.
Whether the destruction of the American forests shall go as far as this is now a live question which has only just begun to be appreciated.
Another reason for the reckless American att.i.tude toward the forest is the frequency and severity of forest fires. This has led to the fear on the part of lumbermen of losing what stumpage they had, and so they have cleared their holdings quickly and sold the timber. Their motto was "cut or lose."
A third incentive to devastative methods was the levy of what were considered unjust taxes.
Hundreds of thousands of acres in the white pine region, notably in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, have been cut over, abandoned, sold for taxes, and finally reduced by fire to a useless wilderness because of the shortsighted policy of heavy taxation. To lay heavy taxes on timber land is to set a premium on forest destruction, a premium that is doing more than any other single factor to hinder the spread of conservative lumbering among the owners of large bodies of timber land. * * * Heavy taxes are responsible for the barrenness of thousands of square miles which should never have ceased to be productive, and which must now lie fallow for many decades before they can be counted again among the wealth-making a.s.sets of the nation. (Pinchot, _Agric. Yr.
Bk._, 1898, pp. 184-185.)
On the treatment of the questions of fire and taxes depends the future of American forest industries. (Bruncken, p. 226.)
Undoubtedly much waste has been caused by sheer ignorance of forest conditions and methods, which, if followed, would secure successive crops instead of one, but it is safe to say that the desire for immediate profits has been the dominant cause of reckless lumbering.
So short-sighted has the policy of private owners proved itself, that it is a question whether any large extent of forest land can safely be left in private hands. No individual lives long enough to reap more than one forest crop. Only corporations and States can be expected to have an interest long enough continued to justify the methods of conservative lumbering.
As a matter of fact, nearly one-half of the privately owned timber of the United States is held by 195 great holders, the princ.i.p.al ones being the Southern Pacific Company, the Weyerhauser Timber Company, and the Northern Pacific Railway Company, which together own nearly 11 per cent. of the privately owned forests of the country. These large holders are cutting little of their timber, their object, however, being not so much to conserve the forests as to reserve to themselves the incalculable private profits which are expected to come with the future enormous increase in the value of timber.
Over against this policy, stands that of the United States Forest Service of increasing the area of the National Forests in order to conserve them for the public welfare. The pity is that the government ever let the forests pa.s.s out of its hands. Only forty years ago seventy-five per cent. of the timber now standing was publicly owned.
Now about eighty per cent. of it is privately owned. In the meanwhile its value has increased anywhere from ten to fifty fold, according to locality.[3] Some large corporations, however, like the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Kirby Lumber Company, of Texas, and the International Paper Company, have entered upon a policy of conservative lumbering.
Of the actual practices which distinguish destructive lumbering, a few may be cited. Stumps are cut too high and tops too low. Good lumber is wasted on lumber roads and bridges, Fig. 113. Saplings are torn down in dragging out logs. Slash is left in condition to foster fires and left with no shade protection. Seedlings are smothered with slash.
Seed trees are all cut out leaving no chance for reproduction. Only poorer sorts of trees are left standing, thus insuring deterioration.
Paper pulp cutting goes even farther than lumbering, and ordinarily leaves nothing behind but a howling wilderness.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 113. Red Spruce Used in Building Skidway, and Left in the Woods. Hamilton Co., New York.]
The production of turpentine from the long-leaf pine, Fig. 114, at the annual rate of 40,000 barrels has meant the devastation of 70,000 acres of virgin forest.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 114. Turpentine Boxing, Cup System. Georgia. _U.
S. Forest Service._]
In view of this wholesale destruction it becomes of interest to know how much still remains of the timber supply of the United States.
The latest and most authoritative estimate of standing timber in continental United States, excluding Alaska, gives a total of 2,800,000,000 M feet B.M.,[4] of which 2,200,000,000 M feet are privately owned, about 539,000,000 M feet are in the National Forests (Fig. 119, p. 271,) and 90,000,000 M feet are on the unreserved public lands, National parks, State lands and Indian reservations.
Earlier estimates were hardly more than guesses. For example the census of 1880 estimated the stumpage of the U. S. at 856,290,100 M feet, while the census of 1900 gives a total of 1,390,000,000 M feet.
The discrepancy appears still greater when it is remembered that in the meantime 700,000,000 M feet were cut. Of this amount 500,000,000 M feet were of conifers or 80,000,000 M feet more than were included in the estimate of 1880. The simple fact is of course that the earlier estimates were gross underestimates, due to the fact that they were based on entirely inadequate data, and therefore can not be used to obscure the now unquestionable fact that the timber supply of this country is surely and rapidly melting away.
The Forest Service estimates that the present annual cut of saw timber is about 50,000,000 M feet. At this rate the present stand would last about 55 years and the privately owned timber only 44 years. This estimate does not allow for growth and decay.
While the population of the United States increased 52 per cent. from 1880 to 1900, during the same period the lumber-cut increased 94 per cent. In other words the yearly increase in use is 20 to 25 per cent. per capita, that is, fast as the population grows, the lumber consumption increases nearly twice as fast. This increase in the lumber-cut far overbalances the growth of trees.
It is also to be remembered that this increase in the use of lumber is in spite of the enormous increase of subst.i.tutes for lumber, such as brick, cement and steel for building, and steel for bridges, vehicles, fences, machinery, tools, and implements of all kinds.
How lavishly we use lumber may further be appreciated from the fact that we consume 260 cubic feet[5] per capita, while the average for 13 European countries is but 49 cubic feet per capita. In other words every person in the U. S. is using five times as much wood as he would use if he lived in Europe. It is estimated that on an average each person in this country uses annually the product of 25 acres of forest. _The country as a whole, cuts every year, between three and four times more wood than all the forests grow in the meantime._ By contrast, the princ.i.p.al countries of Europe, cut just the annual growth, while Russia, Sweden and j.a.pan, cut less than the growth. In other words, the 2,800,000,000,000 feet B.M. of the stumpage of the United States is a capital which is constantly drawn upon, whereas, the 944,700,000,000 board feet of the forest of the German Empire is a capital which is untouched but produces annually 300 board feet per acre.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 115. (Lumber Production by Regions, 1907).
Southern States include: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma.
Pacific States include: Washington, Oregon and California.
North Atlantic States include: New England, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland.
Lake States include: Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.
Central States include: Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri.