PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE OF FOREST ECOXOAIICS 



63 



man law, would not condemn and seek 

 to prosecute forest growers for attempt- 

 ing similar co-operative improvement 

 of a business still more necessary to 

 the community. 



In short, tlie public would prefer to 

 see all forest industry, public and pri- 

 vate, on a sound business footing cal- 

 culated to preserve it and its benefits 

 to the community, and would expect to 

 pay the cost of producing lumber from 

 the tree to the yard plus the same fair 

 profit that the public itself requires 

 from its indi\idual enterprises. And 

 if this is true, the great need today is 

 for teaching the principles of the busi- 

 ness from start to finish. Every proc- 

 ess, its cost, and its relation to other 

 processes and to the final price of the 

 product, should be common knowledge. 



Nothing can be more inconsistent, so 

 long as most of our forests are pri- 

 vately owned, and even the public for- 

 ests must be manufactured for us pri- 

 vately, than to antagonize the lumber- 

 man whose help we must have by con- 

 tinuing such ignorance of his problems 

 that we even treat him as an enemy. 

 On the whole, forest industry proba- 

 bly surpasses any other in smallness of 

 profit. Unusual opportunity has built 

 some large fortunes, but for every one 

 of these are many cases where the pub- 

 lic has profited by failure. Nor is 

 stumpage speculation any exception. 

 Times are changed. Taxes, protection 

 and interest are now compounding more 

 rapidly than prices advance. The tend- 

 ency is toward competitive over-pro- 

 duction rather than toward monopolis- 

 tic holding back of material. Few if 

 any things are sold at so much less than 

 their value as the trees of which lumber 

 are made. 



Whatever may have been in the past, 

 when new supplies were easily availa- 

 ble, the lumber producer now sees his 

 industry dependent on forest preserva- 

 tion and his interest in this is as keen 

 as ours. If he does not practice fores- 

 try it is, as Forester Graves says, for 

 one or more of three reasons : first, 

 the risk of fire; second, burdensome 

 taxation ; third, low price of lumber. 

 This situation will not be relieved by 

 threats of compulsion but only by learn- 

 ing what it costs to furnish forest crops 

 and establishing a business-like policy 

 accordingly. 



When forest economics are as well 

 understood as the economics of fruit 

 or wheat growing, the suspicion which 

 always confronts mystery will no 

 longer manifest itself in prejudice 

 which works to the consumers disad- 

 vantage. The private as well as pul.)- 

 lic lumber producer, as a class, because 

 he is honest and useful as a class, will 

 be accorded the same respect and -help- 

 ful sympathy as is accorded the farmer 

 or engineer who develops the possi- 

 bilities of utilizing our country and sup- 

 plying its people. And he will be quick 

 to respond. 



So we always get back to education, 

 the line in which forestry effort is the 

 weakest. The ingenuity of theatrical, 

 railroad, political and advertising agen- 

 cies is proverbial. Activities of this 

 kind are now regarded as business ne- 

 cessity. They are needed and legiti- 

 mate nowhere more than in forest prop- 

 aganda, which has nothing to conceal 

 but everything to teach. Education is 

 a matter of publicity and publicity is a 

 trade. It cannot be practiced intui- 

 tively. Foresters and lumbermen must 

 learn this trade. 



* An address delivered at the Fifth National Conservation Congress, November 20, 1913. 



