Welcome to Money for the Rest of Us.

This is a personal financial on money, how it works, how to invest it, and how to live

without worrying about it.

I'm your host, David Stein, today's episode 359.

It's titled, Why Are There So Many Shortages?

I recently read an essay by Kate Morgan, in which she described that in 1904, a forester

at the Bronx Zoo noticed that the American chestnuts trees at the zoo were developing

strange, spotty, orange, yellow patches.

It was a fungus.

William A. Murl examined it and published his findings a year later.

By then, the disease had spread to New Jersey, Maryland, the District of Columbia, and Virginia.

From 1904 to 1943 and a half billion American chestnut trees died.

It wiped it out across the Eastern US.

Later, scientists at the US Department of Agriculture determined that the fungus arrived

on ornamental Japanese chestnuts, imported to the US as early as 1876.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the chestnut was used for a key source of wood.

Timber, just using the American chestnut, was a multi-billion dollar industry adjusted

for inflation.

The American chestnut is huge, it's fast growing.

Typically, it's rot resistant.

It could be milled into cabin logs, furniture, fence posts, railroad ties, and it matured

in about 20 years.

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