What Forests Give

THE ANSWER OF THE PIONEERS

Two hundred years ago this would have been an easy question to answer.

When one of our wise great-grandfathers looked over his land he probably asked himself:

"If I leave that south 40 acres for a wood lot, what'll I get from it?"

He knew there was the wood for the great fireplace where the food was cooked. There were boards to repair the house, the old part of which was of logs and the newer wing of clap boards. During the winter he'd cut down one or two of the hard maples he didn't need for sugar, and the chestnut tree that grew the poorest nuts and make them into chairs and tables. That butternut tree would give all the dye his wife wanted for the linsey-woolsey she wove. There were as many squirrels in the trees as there were nuts to feed them, and nothing was better for a Sunday dinner than squirrel potpie; nor anything that felt better around the neck when the snow flew, than a squirrel skin. There'd be a wild turkey for Thanksgiving, perhaps. If a fox or wolf made a den under the roots of the fallen hickory—why the skin of either of them would help make a fine lap robe in the sleigh.

Farmer's Woodlot—New Hampshire

If our great-grandfathers should come back they wouldn't know their country. Wherever those hardy Europeans had struggled through the waves to set foot on the Atlantic coast, they met a solid phalanx of trees, from Maine to Florida. So far as they could see, this America was one continuous forest! For a hundred years their children and grandchildren who pushed steadily west through thick woods must have thought the same thing. Not until a later generation had gone down the western slopes of the Appalachians did the white men come out of the forests upon the prairies. The Great Valley of the Mississippi which lay ahead was threaded with streams, and trees grew along their banks, but there were no forests. During the next 40 years the settlers pushed on west through prairie grass so tall that it swished their boot tops. Whenever the long lines of their covered wagons broke through the thick soft mat of grass roots, the tires were in heavy black earth. Generations of pioneers followed each other down to the Mississippi, boated across it, went on over hundreds of miles of prairie, and pulled up to high ground. Here the long grass was done, and their wagon wheels rolled merrily through short, thin grasses, on a hard, dry, flat surface without a tree in sight. A land the like of which neither they nor their ancestors to the remotest generations had ever heard of—the Plains!

New England Coast

Our Continuous Forest

Not within the memory of man, savage or civilized, had there been forests on those high plains. Not any trees since the Rockies rose up to cut off the rain clouds from the West and the great inland sea drained away through the Gulf of Mexico and the St. Lawrence. After the grass had had time to cover the plains, the land became the pasture place of buffalo and antelope, and the hunting ground of Indians. Pioneers pushing on across the high plains came again into a land of forests—the Rocky Mountains thick with trees. Trees covered the steep slopes up to the snow line and down on the western sides to the Pacific's edge. Half the land the pioneers had crossed between ocean and ocean was forest land.

When the long march of the settlers toward the West began, there were only 884,000 white people in the country, and there were nearly 900,000,000 acres of forests. Although their way of living depending on having all the wood and other forest products they chose to use, these men did not know how to use them for many things. Now there are 127,000,000 of us, we have only 615,000,000 acres of forest land left, and we want from forests things of which our great-grandfathers never dreamed.

How can we get what we want?

Take for instance the wood we use for houses. Our great-grandfather's homes were built of whole tree trunks piled one on another. No more was done to a tree than to fell it, cut the trunk the right length, notch it near the ends so that it would fit between the other logs that were laid at right angles to it. Often the bark was left on. It took a great many trees to build a small log house—trees that might have been a hundred years growing. If we all lived now in houses that took so many large trees to build, we should have few forests left.

Log Cabin—East Tennessee

After sawmills were built where there was water power to run them, the great logs could be divided into boards and timbers. Good boards were cut from trees that were neither very large nor very old, and houses built of clapboards and shingles took fewer trees and were far more comfortable.

Though some of these early houses of wood have lasted very well, they do not meet our needs and standards today. There is one of them near Dedham, Mass., built by a well to-do gentleman about 1700. It had all the modern conveniences of that time. It was heated, for in the living room, which was also the kitchen, is a great fireplace taking up most of one side. The spit on which meats were roasted and the cranes on which kettles were hung are still in place. The glass in the tiny windows was brought from England, and the small uneven panes have turned pinkish-purple through the years. The sleeping rooms had no heat at all, but there were great ticks stuffed with feathers, one to sleep on, one to sleep under. There was a good water supply—a well a hundred feet from the side door with a bucket drawn up by a chain. There were no clothes closets in this old house. Mother's other dress and father's Sunday suit hung on wooden pegs against the walls. The lighting system consisted of candles set in pewter sticks and one little whale-oil lamp. A wonderful museum, but no place for modern life to go on in! What was comfort to our great-grandfathers is discomfort for us. And what was a cheap house in their day would be a costly house now, for it would take a great many trees to build a house like this one in Dedham.

It is estimated that there are now 3,250,000 "living units"—that is, places where single families make their homes—that do not come any nearer to the American standard of health and comfort than this old Dedham house does, and that during the next 10 years—with young people marrying and setting up new homes and old living places wearing out and being abandoned like old shoes—7,500,000 new dwelling units will be needed. Where are these 7,500,000 new living places to come from?

The Fairbanks House at Dedham, Mass.