Walter J. Damtoft Collection
Forest Conservation in Relation to the Pulp and Paper Industry," paper delivered before the Cnetral States Forestry congresses, Louisville, Kentucky, November 17, 1932, by Walter Julius Damtoft, Forester, The Champion Fibre Company. [7 pages]
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Forest Conservation In Relation to the Pulp and Paper Industry

delivered before

The General States Forestry Congress

Louisville, Kentucky

November 17, 1932

by

W. J. Damtoft, Forester- The Champion Fibre Company

        The relation of forest conservation to the pulp and paper industries is an intimate one, and one which greatly concerns the general welfare. Paper is the basis of our modern civilization. Without a plentiful supply of it we would be hampered into the conduct of all out business, and the progress in education would be retarded. The United states is by far the greatest consumer of paper in the world, and the astonishing progress which the country has made may in some measure be attributed to the fact that this commodity has always been plentiful and cheap.

        The importance of forest conservation to the pulp and paper industry is dependent upon the future demand of that industry for wood in relation the probable supply. The tendency has been to view this relationship with alarm, an alarm that has been caused, not by any careful analysis of the situation but by the apparent never ending increase in the consumption of wood products as contracted with the striking statistics as to our diminishing forests, which have wide publicity.

       Today however we are coming to a realization that increase in the record of some human activities is ceasing and that it may eventually decline. As the total consumption of any commodity is dependent upon per capita consumption and total population, we may by evaluating these trend arrive at the trend of

 
      future total use of the commodity.

      Today we are in a far better position to view the outlook for probable maximum demands or some of our standard commodities, and thereby the maximum demands for their raw materials, than we have ever been heretofore. This is because it is now fairly well established that the rate of increase in out population has begun to diminish and that we are rapidly approaching a condition of stabilized population; and also because we have available quite satisfactory statistics on the past trends in per capita consumption of many commodities.

       Such statistics have been compiled by the paper industry and they strikingly reveal that the domestic per capita consumption of practically all of the major grades of paper reached its maximum before the termination of our recent economic boom. If these statistics could be viewed together with similar statistics of other wood using industries we might then have a basis for intelligently approximating the likely maximum demands on our forest for several generations in advance. Such an estimate would be far more accurate than any which could have been made during the period of rapid increases in our population and of rapid increases in per capita consumption of standard commodities.

       If, besides such an estimate, we could then place a reasonably accurate inventory of present available forest products and a reasonably accurate forecast of future productivity of timberlands we would have a basis for more intelligently determining whether their is any present need for great alarm. Such an inventory is already underway by the Federal Government and its earl completion