Southern Appalachian Digital Collections

Western Carolina University (20) View all

Secretary of Agriculture report on watersheds

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  • APPALACHIAN AND WHITE MOUNTAIN WATERSHEDS. 11 How intensely the whole country would feel the loss of a great resource like hardwood timber was merely indicated by the injurious effects of the anthracite coal strike a few years ago. Many of our great industries, such as furniture, vehicle, and cooperage manufacture, depend absolutely upon hardwood. These industries will fail with the hardwood supply. Not only will they fail, the whole country will suffer for want of their products. Our present national forests furnish no hardwood timber because hardwoods grow only in the East. There have been in the United States four great hardwood centers— the Ohio Valley, the Lake States, the lower Mississippi Valley, and the Appalachian States. The Ohio Valley in the past has been the main center of production. Even as late as 1899, the States of Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana produced 25 per cent of the hardwood. In 1906, they produced only 14 per cent; both the States of Ohio and Indiana fell off over 50 per cent. They have reached a sudden end as great hardwood producers. Their many hardwood-using establishments which are now pressed for supplies will largely exhaust their remaining remnants within a few jrears. The lands from which the timber was cut have been cleared and turned into farming, for which in large part they are well adapted. The three Lake States furnished less hardwood lumber in 1906 than they did in 1899. Unquestionably their maximum production has been reached, and their decline is likely to be almost as rapid as that of Ohio and Indiana, because of the nearness of many wood-using industries which will make heavy demands upon their supplies. The hardwood lands of the Lake States are for the most part agricultural lands, and they are rapidly being cleared for the production of grain, grasses, and potatoes. The same is true of the lower Mississippi Valley. The hardwoods occupy the richest agricultural land which, almost as fast as the timber is cut, is being turned into farms. Present indications are that the swamp land, notable for the production of hardwoods, will within a few years be drained and cleared for agriculture. This leaves but one other hardwood region—the Appalachian Mountains. The Appalachians differ fundamentally from the other regions because they are not of agricultural value; their main usefulness is for timber production. In 1906 they produced 48 per cent of the hardwoods of the country. It is clear that they must be counted upon for even a much larger proportion in the future. Although they bear hemlock, pine, and spruce in quantity, it is in the production of hardwoods that the Appalachians have their chief value. It is to them that the hardwood-using industries must look for future supplies, and even with the Appalachians the country has only a sixteen years' supply now available for the ax. The Southern Appalachian region contains a timbered area of over 58 million acres. Including the mountains of Pennsylvania, New York, and New England, it is safe to estimate the Appalachian area as covering 75 million acres primarily adapted to hardwood timber. Only a small part of this—12 to 15 per cent—is covered by virgin growth. The remainder has been cut over, and some of it has been cleared. Throughout the Appalachian region the forest has suffered incalculable damage by fire, which over most of the region still burns
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Object’s are ‘parent’ level descriptions to ‘children’ items, (e.g. a book with pages).