However wide and varied the normal use of lumber may be, it is at
the present time, due to the conditions in which the great war has
left us, subject to abnormally excessive demands and will be for a
period of years to come. When you consider that even in fireproof
homes built of concrete, stone, or brick, lumber bears from 20 to
25 per cent of the cost of the building, and that now 80 per cent
of the houses in the United States are built entirely of wood,
you can easily guess why so much used to be said, even in pre-war
times, about the disappearance of our forests and the advancing
prices of lumber.