EIJITORIAL COMMENT 193 



ing ownership of forest lands of this country by the pubhc than the 

 editors of this Journal. We still believe that the enactment of the 

 Weeks law, authorizing purchase of private timber lands' by the Gov- 

 ernment, was one of the wisest and most far-reaching legislative meas- 

 ures adopted within the last decade. We are advocating with all our 

 strength, and with deepest convictions of the wisdom of the action, its 

 extension so as to cover not only forest lands needed for watershed 

 protection, but also forest lands for timber production alone. What 

 we should like to guard against is the practical limitation of such a 

 policy, and therefore its inadequacy for the immediate solution of the 

 serious situation with respect to future supplies of timber. It is only 

 because we believe that as an immediate solution it is not likely to 

 accomplish any tangible results within the brief space of time which 

 we have left in which to make our remaining timber last, that we cannot 

 see in this policy alone a practical solution. 



The sponsors of the resolution have evidently entirely overlooked 

 the fact that in order for public ownership of forest lands to accom- 

 plish the purpose which they had in mind the people of this country, 

 either the Federal Government or the States, must acquire within a 

 short space of time the greater part, if not all, of the 78 per cent of 

 the country's forests, including the best and most accessible timber now 

 in private ownership. 



These private timber lands represent a value close to six billion dol- 

 lars, not including the mill and logging equipment, in which another 

 billion dollars is invested. While the war has demonstrated that noth- 

 ing is too great for the Government to undertake when the necessity 

 is evident, especially since under conservative management this invest- 

 ment could pay a fair rate of return on its entire valuation, it is difficult 

 to conceive that the present or any other Congress confronted with a 

 budget two or three times larger than before the war would ever give 

 its consent to the Government undertaking such a policy on a large 

 scale. Yet nothing short of large-scale public timber-land purchase 

 can solve the problem. As a matter of fact, it is doubtful whether even 

 the advocates of this resolution intended that the Government should 

 undertake purchase of public lands on such an enormous scale. What 

 they evidently had in mind is the gradual acquisition of private forest 

 lands as they are cut over by their present owners. It is roughly esti- 

 mated that from 10 to 12 million acres of private timber land is cut 

 over every year. Of this about one million acres is cleared for agri- 

 cultural use, six to seven million acres comes up mostlv to inferior 

 second growth, and from three to four million acres becomes waste 



