PRIVATK FORESTRY 117 



protected. We are failing to produce by growth the materials that will 

 be needed for local industries, needed to make a large part of our land 

 useful to the State and community, needed to prevent one part of the 

 country becoming dependent on another far-distant part, with the in- 

 evitable burden of high prices. 



Xature is so prolific that some vegetation usually follows the initial 

 stages of forest destruction. Occasionally by a combination of adven- 

 titious circumstances, and in spite of current methods employed, repro- 

 duction follows unrestricted cutting or even a first fire of moderate 

 proportions. j\Iore often the succeeding growth is inferior. Repeated 

 fires and other abuse cause further deterioration, so that millions of 

 acres of cut-over land are covered with worthless species or brush, or 

 with trees that are so crooked, slow growing, or defective that they 

 will never yield products of value. The fact that there is some woody 

 growth on cut-over lands gives a false impression. \'ery commonly 

 it is but a screen of valueless vegetation that conceals the effects of 

 forest abuse. Pennsylvania has its great forests of low scrub oak that 

 through repeated fires have replaced a growth of valuable trees. South- 

 ern New England has thousands of acres of slow-growing, crooked 

 sprouts of hardwoods replacing pine or thrifty hardwoods. Minnesota 

 has hundreds of square miles of bird cherry and fireweed in place of 

 her former wonderful white and red pine. The South has its worthless 

 blackjack oak rei)lacing tlie yellow pine. The IMiddle West has her 

 heavily grazed woodlots that are almost bare of young growth. Cali- 

 fornia has its chaparral or brush, the eft'ect of a destructive system of 

 annual or periodic burning of pine forests. 



Sometimes forests are wiped out by a great conflagration like that in 

 ^linnesota last fall, which killed several hundred people and destroyed 

 many million dollars' worth of property. Generally the process is slower 

 and less spectacular, but the consequences are just as serious. Already 

 the general effect of depleting our forest resources is being felt bv 

 wood-using industries and by the consumers of lumber. Hundreds of 

 communities are suft'ering because the resource supporting their chief 

 industry has been exhausted. Sawmills and wood-working establish- 

 ments close, subsidiary industries can no longer exist, the population 

 moves away, farms are abandoned, roads and other public improve- 

 ments deteriorate, and whole townships and even counties are impov- 

 erished. A few individuals may have realized handsomely from the 

 speculative enterprise. The community has been gutted of its principal 

 capital. It has lost the basis for industry and has now only unproduc- 

 tive land that for many years will be a burden rather than a source of 



