SEGREGATION OF FARM FROM FOREST LAND 639 



showed him that the soil was niggardly and the future of the county 

 unpromising. . . . Today the country remains as it was then — ■ 

 dull, commonplace, and unfruitful. . . . It is a dead monotonous 

 country, which only centuries of tilling and fertilizing can make pros- 

 perous.'' 



The historian's comment upon the region is officially confirmed, for 

 there was a decrease in population in Spencer County of nearly 8 per 

 cent during the last census period. In this connection it may be re- 

 marked that the census also shows that thirteen States east of the Mis- 

 sissippi, during the years 1900-1910, sufl:'ered an actual decrease in the 

 area of their improved lands. "Improved" land which reverts to an 

 "unimproved'' condition is almost always automatically on its way to 

 forest, via brush and woodland. Truly, the classification of our lands 

 as between farm and forest has been long under way. 



The essential point does not hinge upon such items ; it lies in the fact 

 that logging has been and is an extremely rapid exploitation (around 

 20,000 acres a day for the country), whereas any form of agricultural 

 development is of necessity slow, expensive, and, if successful, de- 

 pendent upon a whole series of economic and social conditions which 

 are separate from considerations of mere soil and climate. There is, 

 therefore, an economic hiatus between logging and farming. Even 

 under favorable conditions, this interval is one of several decades and, 

 under average conditions, is hardly less than fifty years. With condi- 

 tions at all unfavorable, the period lengthens indefinitely .^- 



The forester must contend that it is a wholly useless economic waste 

 for logged-ofif lands to lie idle during this period. 



It is a matter for constant wonder that so generally foresters as well 

 as others overlook the fact that in any region which is made up of 

 irregular areas of arable land mixed in with areas of low agricultural 

 value, but still capable of satisfactory timber production (as is so 

 typically the case in the Lake States and South), the maximum 

 economic development can onlv come with the development of all the 

 land. With farms and forests well mixed and both worked intensively, 

 each furnishes the other a local market and a local labor supply ; both 

 are interested in transportation, social conditions, and all items of real 

 and permanent development. Perhaps no point needs greater accent 

 than that there is no antagonism between farm and forest. Instead of 

 being, one a positive and the other a negative, they are complementary 



^ Porbes, Proceedings of Sonthcni Logging Congress, IQT7, p. 50; Shattuck, 

 lac. cit. 



