Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 163 of the 1983 Third Edition of Douglass C. North’s, Terry L. Anderson’s, and Peter J. Hill’s Growth & Welfare in the American Past: A New Economic History:

In both England and the United States, wood was one of the more important raw materials in the nineteenth century, providing a major source of fuel, building material, and chemicals. As industrialization exhausted wood supplies, there was grave concern that the rising wood prices would limit continued economic expansion. However, in the face of rising scarcity, responses were many. Fossil fuels gradually replaced wood; and plywood, composed of what previously had been considered waste materials, became a common building material. Bridges, ships, and machinery, which were made of wood in 1800, were almost entirely constructed of iron or steel by 1900. All told, the response was immense. By 1954, per capita wood consumption in the United States had fallen to one-half of its 1900 level; most people had forgotten that a “wood crisis” had ever existed.