Checking the Waste: A Study in Conservation

by Mary Huston Gregory

A much smaller loss comes from the winds that sometimes level all the trees over many square miles. This can not, of course, be prevented, except possibly in the turpentine forests, but care should be taken to use all the wood, never allowing it to decay where it fell, and also to replant the land with trees, unless it is fitted for agriculture.

A great saving of the forests may be effected by what is called preservative treatment, which consists of treating railroad ties, piling, mine timbers, poles, and posts with creosote or zinc chlorid to prevent decay from the moisture of the ground or from injury by salt-water borers. The use of creosote is almost double the cost of zinc chlorid, but it is much more effective and durable. A fence post can be treated with creosote for about ten cents, a railroad tie for twenty cents, and a telephone pole for from seventy-five cents to a dollar. In every case the timber treated will last twice as long as it would without such treatment and in view of the present high prices it is bad business policy to use timber in such a way that it will need replacing soon. It is estimated that if all timbers which could be profitably treated were so cared for, it would mean a money saving to the owners of $47,000,000, and an annual saving in wood equal to 4,000,000,000 board feet of lumber.

The next point in the conservation of the forests is to seek substitutes to take the place of wood. There are many uses of wood which nothing else will satisfactorily supply. For example, no railroad cross-tie has ever been designed of other material that does not increase the danger of railway accidents, though over two hundred kinds have been patented.

There is nothing that will take the place of wood in furniture, and in many small articles. Some articles might be replaced in metal, but it makes them too heavy or too expensive. But in certain lines there is an excellent opportunity to use other materials to great advantage.

Cars are now being built of steel, and of combinations of metal with asbestos. These are not yet entirely satisfactory, but it is hoped that they can be perfected soon. Cement and concrete are taking the place of wood to a great extent in building, and their use will doubtless increase rapidly.

When veneer is used for barrels and boxes it affords a saving of nearly two-thirds in the amount of wood required. This is a line of use where cheaper substitutes should always be used if possible, because a package is usually used only once, never more than twice, and then discarded, so that the wood is put to little real service compared with other wooden articles.

When possible, small articles of wood should be made only in a forest region or near saw-mills to use the scraps and save an unnecessary drain on the more valuable grades of lumber.

One of the most important lines in which substitutes are practicable is in the making of paper and box-board or pasteboard. The latter is sometimes called strawboard, because it is made from wheat straw, and where it is manufactured, uses a large amount of straw that would otherwise be wasted, but the great wheat fields of the West still have immense quantities of unused straw, which, if made into strawboard, would not only bring more prosperity to that region but would lessen the drain on the forests.

A box bound with wire and made of corrugated paper now takes the place for many light articles of the wooden packing-case. The strawboard also takes the place of wood-pulp for smaller paper boxes. Rice-straw, hemp, flax-straw, cotton fiber and peat have all been tested in a small way and found to make excellent paper, and it is thought corn-stalks can also be used, but none of these is now manufactured in the United States on a large scale. This is largely because the price of pulp-wood is low, and the cost of experimenting with new materials is great with the results uncertain.

This brings us to the last one of our preventive measures for the decline of our forests, the one which needs the most careful attention of all—the replanting of the lands that are not fitted for agriculture, and planting trees about houses and unoccupied spaces.