White Pine--What of Our Future Supply?
It is claimed that where Dartmouth College is, in the town of Hanover,
New Hampshire, on the bank of the Connecticut River, there once stood a
white pine tree two hundred and seventy feet in height. That is said to
have been the tallest white pine of which there is a record.
Of the thirty-seven species of pine that grow in the United States, the
white pine is the best. Nature was lavish in distributing this beautiful
and useful tree on American soil, for it has been found growing in
twenty-four states of the Union.
The following quotation is from Bulletin 99 of the Forest Service of the
United States:
"White pine occurred originally in commercial quantities in Connecticut,
Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland,
Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York,
North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina,
Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. The cut has
probably exceeded that of any other species. Several timber trees have a
wider commercial range, and at the present time two yield more lumber
yearly--Douglas fir and longleaf pine--but white pine was the leader in
the market for two hundred and fifty years. Though to-day the original
forests of this species are mere fragments of what they once were, the
second growth in small regions is meeting heavy demand. In
Massachusetts, for example, the cut in 1908 was two hundred and
thirty-eight million feet, and practically all of it was second growth.
It is not improbable that a similar cut can be made every year in the
future from the natural growth of white pine in that state. It might be
shown by a simple calculation that if one-tenth of the original white
pine region were kept in well-protected second growth, like that in
Massachusetts, it would yield annual crops, successfully for all time,
as large as the white pine cut in the United States in 1908. To do this
would require the growth of only twenty-five cubic feet of wood per acre
each year, and good white pine growth will easily double that amount.
The supply of white pine lumber need never fail in this country,
provided a moderate area is kept producing as a result of proper care.
"During the past thirty years the largest cut of white pine has come
from the Lake States, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota."
It is shown in the government's reports that forty-eight per cent of the
total lumber output of the United States in 1908 was pine. If something
near this ratio is to be maintained, it must be by planting and growing
the trees. Under the present system of taxation, neither individuals nor
corporations will undertake the work. The investment, at the shortest,
is one of thirty years before returns may be looked for, while twice
that time is better business. Owners of pine forests are obliged now,
and have been in past years, to cut their timber lands clean because of
excessive taxation. To encourage the planting and cultivation of new
pine forests, it would be better to levy no tax upon the individual's or
corporation's young trees until the time that the timber has grown to a
size fit to be marketed, and then only on that portion which is cut into
lumber. Even with this encouragement it is an enterprise that belongs
largely to the state, and from it must emanate the aggressive movement
upon land belonging to the state.
On the subject of "Reforestation with White Pine," Prof. E. G. Cheyney,
Director of the College of Forestry in the University of Minnesota,
states: "Like everything else, a tree does better on good soil, but the
pine tree has the faculty of growing well on soil too poor for any other
crop.... On the best quality of soil the white pine tree has produced
100 M feet per acre in Europe. On the third quality soil it makes from
40 to 60 M feet. Our forest soils are, on the whole, of better quality
than those devoted to forests in Europe.
"The Forest Experiment Station at Cloquet, under the control of the
College of Forestry, is now studying this reforestation policy, and the
State Forest Service is looking after the forest fires and expects to
begin the reforestation of our State Forests this spring.
"There are now two National Forests in Minnesota aggregating about
1,300,000 acres and only 50,000 acres of State Forest. These State
Forests should be increased to at least 3,000,000 acres."