SKGRKGATION OP FARM FROM FOREST I.AND 631 



land values (usually his only real hope for profit), his need for market 

 facilities and transportation and political preferment, and the optimism 

 which took him into the back country ; the precedent of a million other 

 fellows in like fix — all make him a "boomer" for his region and locality. 

 Like considerations afTect the merchant and professional men of the 

 near-by towns. Once located, their whole "stake" is on the table. 



The local interests generate a local pride, which, however ill-founded, 

 makes disparagement of local conditions — social, climatic, or agro- 

 nomic — a most unpleasant and unprofitable undertaking. The 

 "knocker" is the least popular citizen in any "garden spot." To inti- 

 mate, however gently, that local weather or soil might permit profitable 

 forest growth is the foulest of calumnies and an aspersion to be sup- 

 pressed at any cost. Forests, indeed ! 



The situation has fostered unmitigated fraud and often results in 

 the outright intimidation of worthy officers. Does the Forest Service 

 allow the publication of a mild suggestion that one hundred years of 

 fruitless efifort has shown certain lands along the Ohio to be unprofit- 

 able in farms and suggest that these lands might be properly used for 

 growing trees, the Senator from that region protests violently. The 

 Forest Service issues a new publication taking it all back — at least to 

 the extent of allowing that other States and regions have still poorer 

 lands. 



This intimidation extends into other ranks than those of the forester. 

 Observe, for instance, the extreme reserve with which the several 

 bureaus of the Department of Agriculture approach the subject of 

 abandoned farms and crop — worthless land. Observe the remarks and 

 maps of the U. S. Soil Survey and of similar surveys conducted by the 

 several States and agricultural colleges and experiment stations. Land 

 more profitably devoted to timber than to crops may hardly exist 

 officially at all, save as an unfortunate condition prevailing in some 

 other region. 



But only a part of this is the result of intimidation or mere conform- 

 ance with precedent. A very large part of it is derived out of the 

 technical point of view of the professional agronomist and is wholly 

 legitimate. With this point of view the forester does not much come 

 in contact and it is highly important that he should do so at once. The 

 forester and the agronomist have been fighting each other blindly, to the 

 advantage of neither and to the serious detriment of public interest. 



The specialized agronomist usually regards forest trees as but little 

 better than weeds — a last resort for otherwise waste places. In an 



