The most notable instance of forestry in the south is on the estate of George W. Vanderbilt at Biltmore, N.C. This was the first case of systematic forestry under regular working plans in the United States. It was begun in 1891 on about 4000 acres, and has since been extended until it now covers about 100,000 acres. A professional forester with a corps of trained rangers under him is in charge of the work. The Pennsylvania Railroad has recently employed a trained forester and several assistants and has undertaken systematic forestry on a large scale.
The effect of the work of the forest service in assisting private owners is evidenced by the fact that down to the year 1908 670 wood lots and timber tracts had been examined by agents of the forest service, of which 250 were tracts over 400 acres in extent, and planting plans had been made for 436 owners covering a total area of 80,000 acres. Expert advice is also given to wood lot owners upon application by many of the state foresters.
American Practice.—The conditions under which forestry is practised in Europe and in America differ so widely that rules which are received as axiomatic in the one must often be rejected in the other. Among these conditions in America are the highly developed and specialized methods and machinery of lumbering, the greater facilities for transportation and consequent greater mobility of the lumber trade, the vast number of small holdings of forest land, and the enormous supply of low-grade wood in the timbered regions. High taxes on forest properties, cut-over as well as virgin, notably in the north-western pineries, and the firmly established habits of lumbermen, are factors of great importance. From these and other considerations it follows that such generally accepted essentials of European methods of forestry as a sustained annual yield, a permanent force of forest labourers, a permanent road system and the like, are in most cases utterly inapplicable in the United States at the present day in private forestry. Methods of forest management, to find acceptance, must there conform as closely as possible to existing methods of lumbering. Rules of marked simplicity, the observance of which will yet secure the safety of the forest, must open the way for more refined methods in the future. For the present a periodic or irregular yield, temporary means of transport, constantly changing crews, and an almost total ignorance of the silvics of all but a few of the most important trees—all combine to enforce the simplest silvicultural treatment and the utmost concentration of purpose on the two main objects of forestry, which are the production of a net revenue and the perpetuation of the forest. Such concentration has been followed in practice by complete success.
The forests with which the American forester deals are rich in species, usually endowed with abundant powers of reproduction, and, over a large part of their range, greatly dependent for their composition and general character upon the action of forest fires. Of the commercially valuable trees there may be said to be, in round numbers, a hundred out of a total forest flora of about 500 species, but many trees not yet of importance in the lumber trade will become so hereafter, as has already happened in many cases. The attention of the forester must usually be concentrated upon the growth and reproduction of a single species, and never of more than a very few. Thus the silvicultural problems which must be solved in the practice of forestry in America are fortunately less complicated than the presence of so many kinds of trees in forests of such diverse types would naturally seem to indicate.
The forest fire problem is one of the most difficult with which the American forester has to deal. It is probable that forest fires have had more to do with the character and distribution of forests in America than any other factor except rainfall. With an annual range over thousands of square miles, in many portions of the United States they occur regularly year after year on the same ground. Trees whose thick bark or abundant seeding gives them peculiar powers of resistance, frequently owe their exclusive possessions of vast areas purely to the action of fire. On the economic side fire is equally influential. The probability, or often the practical certainty, of fire after the first cut, commonly determines lumbermen to leave no merchantable tree standing. Forest fires are thus the most effective barriers to the introduction of forestry. Excessive taxation of timber land is another of almost equal effect. Because of it lumbermen hasten to cut, and afterwards often to abandon, lands which they cannot afford to hold. This evil, which only the progress of public sentiment can control, is especially prevalent in certain portions of the white pine belt.
Forest Associations.—Public sentiment in favour of the protection of forests is now widespread and increasingly effective throughout the United States. As the general understanding of the objects and methods of forestry becomes clearer, the tendency, formerly very marked, to confound ornamental tree planting and botanical matters with forestry proper is rapidly growing less. At the same time, the number and activity of associations dealing with forest matters is increasing with notable rapidity. There are now about thirty such associations in the United States. One of these, the Society of American Foresters, is composed exclusively of professional foresters. The American Forestry Association is the oldest and largest. It has been influential in preparing the ground work of popular interest in forestry, and especially in advocating and securing the adoption of the federal forest reservation policy, the most important step yet taken by the national government. It publishes as its organ a monthly magazine called Forestry and Irrigation. The Pennsylvania Forestry Association has been instrumental in placing that state in the forefront of forest progress. Its organ is a bi-monthly publication called Forest Leaves. Other states which have associations or societies of special influence in forest matters are California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Colorado, New Hampshire, Georgia and Oregon. Arbor Day, instituted in Nebraska in 1872 as a day for shade-tree planting by farmers who had settled on the treeless prairies, has been taken up as a means of interesting school children in the planting of trees, and has spread until it is now observed in every state and territory. It continues to serve an admirable purpose.
Lumbering.—According to the census report for 1905 the capital invested in logging operations in the United States was $90,454,596, the number of employés engaged 146,596, and their wages $66,990,000; sawmills represented an invested capital of $381,621,000, and employed 223,674 persons, whose wages were $100,311,000, while planing mills represented a capital of $222,294,000 and employed 132,030 persons whose wages were $66,434,000.
| Product. | Output 1906. | Equivalent Wood Volume. | Estimated Woods Waste.[3] | Estimated Mill Waste.[4] | Total Wood Volume Consumed. | |
| Million cub. ft. | Million cub. ft. | Million cub. ft. | Million cub. ft. | |||
| Lumber— | ||||||
| Conifers | 30,200,000 | thousand bd. ft. | 2517 | 1173 | 2170 | 5860 |
| Hardwoods | 7,300,000 | thousand bd. ft. | 612 | 577 | 461 | 1650 |
| Shingles | 11,900,000 | thousand bd. ft. | 107 | 54 | 109 | 270 |
| Pulpwood | 2,900,000 | cords | 261 | 79 | · · | 340 |
| Wood distillation | 1,200,000 | cords | 108 | 12 | · · | 120 |
| Heading | 146,000,000 | sets | 32 | 33 | 45 | 110 |
| Staves— | ||||||
| Tight cooperage | 267,000,000 | 22 | 36 | 32 | 90 | |
| Slack cooperage | 1,097,000,000 | 27 | 22 | 21 | 70 | |
| Poles | 3,500,000 | 35 | 15 | · · | 50 | |
| Veneer | 300,000 | thousand bd. ft. | 50 | 30 | · · | 80 |
| Round mine timbers | 165,000,000 | cub. ft. | 165 | 35 | · · | 200 |
| Hewn cross ties | 77,500,000 | 207 | 503 | · · | 710 | |
| 4143 | 2569 | 2838 | 9550 | |||
All the operations of the lumber trade in the United States are controlled, and to no small degree determined, by the peculiar unit of measure which has been adopted. This unit, the board-foot, is generally defined as a board one foot long, one foot wide and one inch thick, but in reality it is equivalent to 144 cub. in. of manufactured lumber in any form. To purchase logs by this measure one must first know about what each log will yield in one-inch boards. For this purpose a scale or table is used, which gives the contents of logs of various diameters and lengths in board feet. Under such a standard the purchaser pays for nothing but the saleable lumber in each log, the inevitable waste in slabs and sawdust costing him nothing.
The table at foot gives the estimated consumption of wood for certain purposes in the United States in 1906.