arge tropical forests but the timber is hard
to get at and move. China produces but little lumber and needs
much. She is developing into a heavy importing country. Japan
grows only about enough timber to supply her home needs.
Australia imports softwoods from the United States and Canada.
New Zealand is in the market for Douglas fir and hardwoods.

In the past, our export lumber business has been second only to
that of Russia in total amount. The value of the timber that we
exported was larger than that of Russia because much of our
timber that was sent abroad consisted of the best grades of
material grown in this country. In the future, we shall have to
compete in the softwood export business with Russia, Finland,
Sweden, Norway and the various states of southeastern Europe
which sell lumber. In the hardwood business, we have only a
limited number of rivals. With the exception of a small section
of eastern Europe, our hardwood forests are the finest in the
Temperate Zone. We export hickory, black walnut, yellow poplar,
white and red oak even to Russia and Sweden, countries that are
our keenest rivals in the softwood export business.

Europe wants export lumber from our eastern states because the
transportation costs on such material are low. She does not like
to pay heavy costs of hauling timber from the Pacific Coast to
the Atlantic seaboard and then have it reshipped by water.

Our eastern forests are practically exhausted. Our supplies of
export lumber except Douglas fir are declining. Most of the kinds
of export timber that Europe wants we need right at home. We have
only about 258,000,000,000 feet of southern yellow pine left, yet
this material composes one-half of our annual shipments abroad.
We are cutting this material at the rate of 16,000,000,000 board
feet a year. Some authorities believe that our reserves will
last only sixteen years unless measures to protect them are put
into effect at once. At the present rate of cutting long-leaf
pine trees, our outputs of naval stores including turpentine and
rosin are dwindling. We cannot afford to increase our export of
southern yellow pine unless reforestation is started on all land
suitable for that purpose. Our pine lands of the southern states
must be restocked and made permanently productive. Then they
could maintain the turpentine industry, provide all the lumber of
this kind we need for home use, and supply a larger surplus for
export.

Although our sup