DR. COMPTOX'S F0URT1CF,N POINTS 047 



our economic life. The people are no longer in a mood to apply as 

 a test of the desirability of an economic reform whether it puts more 

 money in the pocket of the private owner or not. They will demand 

 that the timberland owners find a way to prevent devastation of timber- 

 lands, and if the owners cannot, then the people will. 

 Let us take up Dr. Compton's arguments point- by point : 



1. "There are already local shortages of standing timber and there 

 xvill be more. The removal of the original forests from the soil of 

 the United States zvithout provision for forest renezval on much 

 ('most' in American Forestry) of the land thus cleared is not neces- 

 sarily a public misfortune." 



If by this statement Dr. Compton means to convey the impression 

 that it was a natural and healthy economic development, as popula- 

 tion and industries increased, to remove a great part of the virgin 

 forests to make room for settlement, agriculture, or other industries, 

 no one will quarrel with him. Anyone, however, who is in the least 

 familiar with the history of the lumber industry in this country knows 

 that the clearing of the virgin forest in most cases was not followed 

 by settlement, and left in its wake nothing but enormous stretches of 

 unproductive waste land. "The removal of the original forests with- 

 out provision for forest renewal on much of the land thus cleared" 

 has been and is a "public misfortune." 



The local shortages of raw material, which he admits are already 

 with us and are bound to grow, cannot therefore be excused on the 

 groimd of "a higher economic necessity" because in most cases they 

 are not accompanied by other economic development. If Dr. Comp- 

 ton followed the forest literature he would know that foresters for 

 the last 20 or 30 years have advocated that the soils of the United 

 States be devoted to the uses to which they are best suited. They 

 therefore could never consider as a misfortune but as a healthy eco- 

 nomic development the removal of virgin forest from agricultural 

 soils which since have been settled. They deplore the policy and 

 still insist that it is unwise economically, although profitable to the 

 lumbermen, of removing forests from soils which are too poor or too 

 rocky to be used for any other purpose but growing forests. It is the 

 old accusation of land speculators that timber growing blocks settle- 

 ment and economic progress, yet it is the very removal of the forest 

 and elimination of the lumber industry, especially in a region of poor 

 soils, that prevents or retards settlement. In Europe, particularly in 



