The Gage Record. (Gage, Okla.), Vol. 9, No. 39, Ed. 1 Friday, October 15, 1909 Page: 4 of 8
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N THE last an)'
ysls all material
wealth ail tha
comfort and ne-
cessities of life
are the product
of two element
—nature and la
bor It uiay be
truly suld that
nature or the
earth I the
mother of labor and the father of
product nccpaaury to auntaln human life
The rlchncaa and prosperity of a country
therefore depend on the presence of nat-
ural rcaourcea within It border euch a
water mlnerula foreita and cultivable aolla
on the one bund and Intelligent human en-
ergy on the other to ahape them Into the
form necessary for the needs of man Of
the two elements the natural resource are
Indispensable for In a country like the des-
ert of Sahara all human effort would be
of but little avail The growth of i nation
depends therefore upon the extent of the
natural resources and upon the knowledge
of how to use them with as little destruc-
tion as possible
The resource of a country fall natu-
rally Into three groups — water mineral
and land — which represent respectively re-
sources which are Inexhaustible resources
which are exhaustible and cannot be re-
newed and rosourcea which are exhaust-
ible but can be renewed It may be ques-
tioned Indeed whether there is such a
thing as an inexhaustible natural resource
Even water through the denudation of the
drainage basins may become Irregular in
its flow or through the careless disposal
of refuse may become polluted so that it
cannot be used Mines are Illustrations of
resources which are exhaustible and not
renewable Gas oil coal and iron once
JhmmZoK I
of tfa IZSJbreat Service
lEGS'fiD
19 E3 Absolute fores Hand'
2 ESS Intermediate between Agn
cultural and foresHanc f
United State ' through ports Apparent exception to this rule appear
th growth of cities the ceeee of tiulgarla and BervU Tbeee countnee wn
preaent Importing more wood than they export P°
considerable areas of forest now Inaccessible and wi
the development of means of exploitation and in
creased demand for lumber they will in time becom
porting countries '
From thla we may Infer that a country In order to n
aelf-auatalnlng aa regard Its timber supply must
an area of about 100 acre of forest land for every
Inhabitant The area necessary to supply all
needed for home consumption will vary of course
the per capita consumption: and the 100 acre per
Inhabitants must be considered the minimum re‘
cause It la bused upon a moderate per capita conium
tion aueh a I found In densely populated countries oi
Europe i like Germany or Frunce
The same minimum area for every 100 Inhabitant
necessary to make a country self-sustnlnlng can also o
deduced In another way At present Germany Imports
353000000 cubic feet of wood from abroad To produce
this amount of timber Germany would have to possess
forest area of 17000000 acres In addition to the 35oou
000 now available In other words ahe would neeo
62000000 acres of forest In order to meet her ®wn ‘"J’
ber requirements or 932 acres for every 100 Inhabi-
tants Germany la an extremely good example wtin
which the productivity of the forest of all other coun-
tries can be compared because her
forest can be taken a a standard of
productiveness
Redwood Cor
ft CAUfOfZtiA
building of railroads and
the general development
of commerce and non-
agricultural Industry The
possibilities for Increas-
ing the productiveness of
the 300000000 acres of
our public graxlng land
are very great
About two per rent of
the total land area will
forever remain 1 desert
There are but few area
within the United State
which on account of the
Intense' heat very low
temperatures alkali or
lack of rainfall are unlit
for the use of man and
may be truly considered
desert land Such land Is
found In
A
WAwmron
Wfi£AT fElD
gone are gone forever
Of all the natural resources the
only one which contains within Itself
the possibility of Infinite renewal is
land The nation should therefore be
most vitally concerned with the con-
servation and improvement of this re-
source Human control over such nat-
ural resources as minerals Is limited
The onfy possible means of conserva-
tion is the avoidance of waste but
their ultimate exhaustion is unavoid-
able With agricultural and forest
land however it is otherwise Land
can not only be conserved but con-
stantly improved and its yield In-
creased While In England the iron
ores and the coal are becoming con-
stantly harder to get and their ex-
haustion is threatened the agricultural
land after a thousand years of cultiva-
tion is now more productive than ever
The wheat fields of England inder In-
tensive cultivation yield 30 bushels to
the acre while the virgin fields of
America on an average yield less than 13
If a far-sighted national policy in the conservation of
natural resources is to make provision for an ever-increasing
population then the greatest possibilities lie
in the direction of developing the land In all its forms—
field forest and range— for notwithstanding all possible
economy in the use of the non-renewable resources they
are bound to decrease as time goes on
One hundred years ago the United States east of the
Mississippi river was an almost unbroken forest com-
prising something over 1000000 square miles or about
700000000 acres Now after about a century of settle-
ment there are not more than 300000 square miles of
merchantable forest land in the eastern United States
About 330000 square miles have been cleared for farm
land The remainder has been culled of its valuable tim-
ber and devastated by fire or else turned into useless
brush land With the growth of population and the
greater demand for agricultural land the ratio between
farm and forest land will change still further The for-
ests will be more and more crowded into the mountains
and upon soils loo thin or too poor for agricultural pur-
poses It may be safely assumed that In 50 or 100 years
‘ the proportion of land devoted to the different purposes
will change almost as much as It has during the past
century These changes will occur especially in the east-
ern part of the United States because there the forest
is not confined as it is in the west to high altitudes
where agriculture is generally impracticable In the
west the forests with a few exe'eptions as in the low
country around Puget sound- are in the mountains which
-rise in the midst of semi-arid plains and their original
area of 150000 Equare miles half of which lies in the
Sierra Nevada and in the Cascades and half in the Rock-
ies has changed but very little since settlement In the
west the increase of agricultural land must be secured
chiefly through the irrigation of the semi-arid land
If we take a long look ahead into the future and try
to picture to ourselves what will be the ultimate propor-
tion of farm forest range and desert in this country 50
years from now in the light of the increasing demand
for agricultural land and of ah approximate knowledge
of the climatic conditions and the physical properties of
the different lands in this country we shall get some-
£!£ OPA7ET or IVATEK PoWED
has advanced from 113000000 acres to 415000000 acres
an increase of nearly 370 per cent
With more Intensive methods of cultivation larger
yields will undoubtedly be obtained from the same area
yet the area itself under agricultural crops will have to
be increased especially it we are to remain an export-
ing country
In Belgium the arable land forms 63 per cent of the
total land area in Denmark 68 in France 48 and in
Germany 47 These countries are not exporters of cere-
als although their methods of cultivation are highly de-
veloped France is especially interesting as a criterion
because its methods are most intensive and it is the
only country that is self-sustaining it produces 98 per
cent of all the cereals which it consumes There is
little doubt that our population In the next 50 years will
readh 50000000 or about 50 persons per square mile
Whether the acreage of Improved farm land will in-
crease at a much faster rate than the population as has
been the case in the past or whether it will grow at
the same or even a slower rate than the population the
future alone can tell but increase it must
'In mountainous Switzerland only 17 per cent of the
land Is cultivated and in Sweden and Norway situated
in an unfavorable climate and with a scanty population
(29 and 18 persons per square mile respectively) the
proportion of arable land is 87 per cent and 13 per
cent respectively
Land chiefly valuable for grazing will form about one-
fifth of -the extent of the United States proper This
land originally lay west of the one hundredth meridian
in the plains and mountain valleys but with the advance
of dry farming its eastern boundary has been shifted
farther west to about the one hundred and third merid-
ian This land receives but a scanty rainfall and can
produce neither forest nor field crop but supports a
vegetation of hardy grasses It was formerly the natu-
ral range of millions of buffalo and is now the grazing
ground of herds of cattle and sheep This land will re-
main largely a natural range since the area which can
be irrigated and thus reclaimed for agricultural pur-
poses or which can be used for dry farming is com-
paratively small
According to government estimates the available wa-
I 7E roATnveST WOODS
in Nevada in Utah and in Oregon in the form of arid
basins Ice-bound deserts are found in Alaska and on
the glacier-covered mountains This land must so lonff
as the climatic conditions of the country continue aa
they are remain unproductive 1
The land chiefly valuable for growing forests will
shrink to about 360000000 acres less than one-fifth of
the extent of the United States proper Together with
the wood lots which will continue to form part of the
farm land the total forest area will amount to approxi-
mately 450000000 acres or a fourth of the total land
area
Will this area be sufficient to provide a population
of 150000000 people with all the timber needed for con-
struction ties poles pulp and all the various uses for
which wood seems to be the only suitable material and
In this country where the per caf
ita consumption is six times as grea
as that in Germany or France and ths
annual growth per acre may be estl
mated roughly as one-third of that U
those countries the forest area wouil
have to be 1600 acres for each 100 In
habitants or more than twice the pres
ent area in order to maintain the pres
ent cut The present area of 775 acrei
for every 100 inhabitants at the pres
ent per capita consumption and an
nual growth per acre would be auffl
clent to meet our own needs if thert
were not present a supply of vrB“
timber the accumulated capital I ol
centuries to meet the deficiency With -the
exhaustion of this remaining vir
gin supply which can last only about
30 years more there must come a tinu
when not only all our exports of tiro
ber must cease but there will not b
enough wood for borne consumption
Even as it is the total exports ol
wood from this country amount to only
five per cent of the lumber cut while
the surplus of exports over i“P°rts
- only 18 per cent— an insignificant
amount This shows clearly that we'
have practically ceased to be an ex--porting
country and the tendency will --
be more and more toward becoming
wood-importing country
How shall this shortage be met?
With an increasing demand for land v
for agricultural crops there is little
hope of increasing the extent of forest
land As we have seen the area nec-
essary for this purpose would have to
is
forest but capable of producing crops will have to be
cleared and tUled to provide for “
tion All the evidence therefore Is that the land un
der forest will during the next BOyearsbereduced o
450000000 acres and this reduced area will have to
provide for a population almost twice as large as the
meJent Nor will there be much hope for covering the
shortage of ouT home production by importation from
abroad '
The demand for timber is constantly growing all over
the world It increases at the rate of five per cent
annually If we compare the total excess of imports
over exports of all wood-importing countries of Europe
with the total excess of exports over imports of all
to protect the soil from erosion regulate the stream woodeXp0rting countries we shall find that there Is
flow and exert its wholesome influence upon the lives
of the people?
With the exception of those countries which have
naturally a humid climate like Great Britain or the
Netherlands the countries with a forest area of only
20 per cent or less show usually to a marked degree bad
deficit for Europe of 141000000 cubic feet which is
met at present by imports from North America Swe-
den Norway and Austria-Hungary have already touched
the highest point in their exports Russia could prob-
ably increase to some extent its exports from the north
where there are still large areas of virgin forest but
climatic conditions with prolonged droughts frosts and thg growing scarcity of timber in the other parts of the
alternating floods and low water as a result of the re-
duced forest area Portugal with a forest area of only
3V& per cent of the total Spain with 16 per cent
Greece with 13 per cent Turkey with 20 per cent and
Italy with 14 per cent are good examples
While the area absolu tely necessary for the regula-
tion of streams and the protection of soils can be deter-
mined only approximately and indirectly the area nec-
essary to make a country self-sustaining as regards the
VACCOruing lo govtr iiiiitfiu eSLiuitucH uie avauauie war vatsaiy tu tuanc a
ter will be sufficient to irrigate 71000000 acres or one production of timber can be found with greater accu-
acre in 714 of the whole region The reclamation ser- racy If we compare the exports of the different coun-
' 1 1 A A Inknhltnnta VTA
The area devoted to agriculture in a half century
instead of being 21 per cent of the total area as it is
now will be nearer 50 per cent That this- is not an
overestimate is indicated by the fact that during the
last so vea-s the improved farm land in this country
vice however does not expect to reclaim more than five
per cent of all the arid land This area together with
that used for dry farming will barely suffice to counter-'
balance the reduction of the productive area in the
tries with the forest area for every 100 inhabitants we
find that countries with 92 acres or more per 100 inhabi-
tants have a surplus of exports over Imports while those
with 85 acres or less have a surplus of imports over ex
empire make it very unlikely that larger supplies -of
timber for export will be available Canada is still able
to increase its exports but the drain upon the Canadian
forests is growing every year and they will remain the
only source of supply to satisfy the urgent needs of the
rest of the world for coniferous timber after Austria-
Hungary and Russia ceaEe to be exporting countries
‘ The growing demand for wood material must be met
then not by an increase of the forest land nor by de-
pending on imports from abroad but by an increase in
the productiveness of the forest and a decrease in the
waste to which chiefly is due the fact that the United
States has the greatest per capita consumption in the
world
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Ballard, M. O. The Gage Record. (Gage, Okla.), Vol. 9, No. 39, Ed. 1 Friday, October 15, 1909, newspaper, October 15, 1909; Gage, Oklahoma. (https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc1792971/m1/4/?q=%22%22~1: accessed July 10, 2024), The Gateway to Oklahoma History, https://gateway.okhistory.org; crediting Oklahoma Historical Society.