Talk for the Rotary Club Meeting, Asheville, N.C., December 20, 1923, by Walter Julius Damtoft.  [3 pages]

        It is presumed that we all appreciate that the forests of Western North Carolina are a tremendous asset.  They constitute the last great stronghold of accessible hardwood timber in the United States.  Their contribution to the incomparable beauty of our mountain playground is of untold value; and as for their commercial importance suffice it to say that North Caroline as a State led the East in timber production in the year 1923

        It is said that the existence of human life is dependent on the products of the soil - and it must not be overlooked that forests are among these products, and although perhaps not essential to life itself are certainly essential to the well being of civilized peoples.  From them are obtained materials used in many of our most important industries, a few among them being lumber, leather, chemical and pulp.

        A supply of wood pulp is essential to the production of cheap paper, without which it would not be possible for literature to be made extensively available to the masses, and so without which the development of enlightened public opinion would be greatly re­tarded - in fact education in general would be denied to many for whom it is now easily obtainable. In this respect alone the manufacture of paper from wood pulp is vital to our progress as a civilized nation.

         It is perhaps not generally known that chemical wood pulp is very similar to cotton and is a potential base for high explosives.  It is also the base for an industry which is engaged in duplicating the product of the silk worm; and it is possible that wood pulp all might furnish the raw materiel for the manufacture of all our clothing.

         These few facts to point out some of the tremendously important possibilities of just this one industry which is dependent on a supply of trees. Forestry is the science concerned with perpetuating and securing full utilization of this supply, and therefore commends itself to the pulp industry.

This industry, through what is called the Woodlands Section of The American Paper and Pulp Association, a section organized primarily to study the whole field of forestry is devoting special attention to that phase of the science which is concerned with the reforestation of denuded land. To what extent the individual pulp companies can undertake such reforestation is absolutely dependent upon economic factors over which it has little control.  Just so long as there remains any uncertainty that the cost of setting out trees will not be justified by the value of the matured forest such re­forestation will be applied to but e very limited extent. The local pulp industry, e.g., which the speaker has the honor to represent, feels that there still exists this un­certainty and for such reason is undertaking the planting of trees merely on an experimental scale - and this principally in order to be in possession of first hand know­ledge of results obtained by the uses of various species in various localities whenever the uncertainty shall have been removed and it becomes clearly advisable to plant on an extensive scale.

         However, in another more important field of forestry, that of handling existing virgin forests in such manner as to secure the best utilization of them and to prevent waste the industry is at present aiding to a very great extent.  It is not taking the lead.  It cannot take the lead for the reason that the product it uses is a secondary one of the virgin forest, the primary one being lumber.

The pulp industry requires cordwood, really a by-product of the lumber industry. It is obtained not only from trees too snail to be utilized for lumber, but from the tops and limbs of trees which have been felled for saw-logs and from slabs, edgings and trimmings from saw-sills; and in utilizing this material it manufactures into a valuable commodity what would otherwise be waste.

And then in another and still again more important practice of

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sizes of species of which it is desired to rid the forest, And so in these respects the pulp industry has been able to be of much assistance , though perhaps rather unconsciously, wherever there has been an attempt to practice forestry in the past.  And if it is now decidedly in the mood to make conscious attempts to give still greater aid to that science to an extent which economic conditions will allow.

.The pulp industry believed that these conditions could be helped today by securing a system of taxation -which would relieve the burden on growing timber, by securing extension of protection to our trees from fire and other enemies such as is afforded now in a limited way by the application of the Weeks Law under which the Federal Government assists the States; and by extension of forest research work: by Federal and State agencies in order to arrive at solutions to many of the detailed problems of forestry and make such solutions available to the public. In other words the industry believes in having the Government aid in encouraging thru a National Forest Policy the voluntary practice of forestry, rather than in having Government compulsion - or we might say prefers to have the Government adopt a policy to which the industry might subscribe unqualifiedly, a policy which would permit freedom of action in handling its own an inherent right to which all Americans so strongly feel entitled.

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