EDITORIAL COMMENT 599 



alone is not enough. . . . The results of the efforts to settle poor 

 and unfit lands under the Homestead and Desert Land Act are written 

 in the tragic failures of thousands of pioneers who wasted their efforts, 

 lost their hopes, and became impoverished and embittered." He then 

 cites definite cases of abandoned farms. "Rural community develop- 

 ment is at the root of a country's progress," citing such community set- 

 tlements from California, Australia, New Zealand, and France, and 

 developing the proper fifteen principles in such settlements. 



In the discussion of the employment in developing other than agri- 

 cultural resources, what is said about the opportunities which the forest 

 resources offer for developing permanent and contented communities 

 interests us, naturally, most. We quote : "The lumber industry as it 

 is at present constituted offers small opportunity for permanent and 

 contented communities. . . . Timber-mining, being essentially mi- 

 gratory, breeds migratory tramp labor. Since the lumberjack must 

 live in a camp and the man with a family is excluded as a worker, the 

 lumber industry is an industry of homeless men. . . . With migra- 

 tory forest industry it is financially impossible to construct residences 

 for workers, because the annual depreciation charges of 25 per cent or 

 more would be far beyond the ability of the worker to pay from 

 wages. . . . These unsatisfactory conditions in the industry can be 

 rectified by transforming it from an industry which uses the forest as 

 a mine to one which treats it as a renewable resource. Such a trans- 

 formation is difficult on private lands. A few private owners mav be 

 found now ready to change their method of handling their timber re- 

 sources and thus provide opportunities for permanent communities. 

 As a rule, however, such a transformation will not take place without 

 the people first securing control of the large timber holdings. For the 

 purpose of providing for the returning soldier we must therefore look 

 to the National Forests. These afford immediate opportunities for 

 creating permanent forest communities in connection with logging 

 operations on them. Assuming that only two-thirds of the forest area 

 within the National Forests, or 100 million acres, is actually forest- 

 bearing land, this area, when fully developed, could, at a conservative 

 estimate, support a permanent population of 300,000 families, allowing 

 each family $800 a year in wages, or about 1,200,000 persons in all." 

 This position is supported by citing such forest communities from 

 Switzerland and France (the Landes). 



"The task of organizing our National Forests into small units on a 

 strictly continuous-yield basis is not as difficult as it may seem and is 

 not beyond the strength of the existing organization in the Forest 



