WEALTH IN WOOD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 July 1941, Page 6

WEALTH IN WOOD

MANY NEW USES FOUND. New Zealand, which has very favourable conditions for the growing of useful timber, will have sources of great wealth in forests if the management of them follows the far-sighted, intelligent policy of several European countries. The importance of wood in the modern human scheme of things is emphasised by Richard St. Barbe Baker, founder of the society known as the Men of the Trees. “Before the war there were about four hundred uses for wood, but today there are over four thousand uses for forest products in one form or another. For each single substitute for wood in the world today, such as steel doors for offices, or cement in buildings, about ten new uses are found for forest products. The manufacturing industries, whether or not wood enters directly into their finished products, are scarcely, if at all, less dependent upon the forest than those whose connection with it is obvious and direct. Wood is an indispensable part of the material structure upon which civilisation rests. “Now if you have any doubt as to the many industries dependent wholly or partially upon wood, consider a few of the hundred and eighty that I have counted. They cover six pages and range from advertising agencies to artificial limb manufacturers, from bank and office furniture manufacturers to boat builders or broom makers, from cabinet makers to coal miners, from the dairying industry to the drug industry. Electric power companies, florists, fruit packers, gymna’siums, camera manufacturers, motor car makers, motion picture industries, all are directly or indirectly, wholly or partially dependent upon forest growth, wood and its byproducts.”