Please note in the figures of the table the decided tendency toward a diminished difference of percentages. The probable explanation is the rising price of lumber which has, from all accounts, by no means reached its crest, and which is forced by the tremendous demand now being made for that material in the world markets. Lumber is one of those staples of such wide and varied use that it is well to consider seriously its conservation, both in guarding its supply and in maintaining a reasonable price. We are all interested, for everybody at one time or another uses some form of lumber.
Face Brick Store Front, St. Louis, Mo. Preston J. Bradshaw, Architect
Need of Saving Lumber
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.
The Wastes of War
But picture what the war has done, and its inevitable effect upon the demand for lumber. According to a comprehensive report on the Direct and Indirect Costs of the War recently issued (November, 1919) by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the direct cost to the warring nations amounts to 186 billions, of which the property loss on land was thirty billions and on sea seven billions. To this must be added forty-five billions as loss of production. That is, not only were vast amounts of property destroyed, but the normal supply was greatly lowered. Take the matter of houses alone, not only were great numbers of them destroyed in the warring zones, but neither could they be replaced, nor could the new houses be built which were normally required by the community. Fortunately for us in America the war destroyed no property, but for a period of two years it prevented normal building to the extent of hundreds of thousands of houses. As a consequence, in Europe all the waste places must be rebuilt and, in both Europe and America, new houses in great numbers must be erected to catch up with normal requirements. There is a house famine the world over.
Attractive Small Face Brick House, Buffalo, N. Y. Thos. A. Fisher, Designer
The Lumber Burden of America