In every study of the future needs of this country for wood and wood products, and in every intelligent plan for supplying such needs, the existing National Forests play a prominent part. These forests, on June 30, 1919, numbered 151, and embraced a total net area of 153,933,460 acres. This area, bearing as it does a stand of usable timber, aggregating perhaps six hundred billion feet, is properly considered the most important anchor which the nation has thrown to windward to prevent our drifting upon a reef of disaster resulting from a famine shortage of one of the natural resources absolutely necessary to industrial activity and progress.