DR. COMPTOX'S rOURTKEN POINTS 949 



in point 8, "The increasing scarcity of raw material," which has re- 

 sulted in "higher prices for the products of the forest." Dr. Comp- 

 ton therefore cannot lightly dispose of the local shortages of timber 

 on the ground that it can he grown somewhere else. It does not mat- 

 ter to the private timber owner how far he ships his lumber, as long 

 as the buyer pays the freight. It does vitally afifect the local com- 

 munity, and through it the nation as a whole, to have to pay high 

 prices for lumber, because of increasing distance of the sources of 

 supply, while near at hand are hundreds of thousands or millions of 

 acres of idle land, producing nothing and constituting a burden upon 

 the community. If Dr. Compton's argument be followed to a logical 

 conclusion, why worry about a lumber shortage at all? After the 

 timber owners on the Pacific Coast have devastated the forests of 

 that region, the people of this country may still get lumber from 

 Siberia, South America, or Central Africa, provided they are willing 

 and able to pay the price. We doubt whether there is a single econ- 

 omist in this country who could advocate such a theory with regard 

 to any natural resource, without risking his reputation or his in- 

 tegrity. 



2. "Possession of cheap and plentiful standing timber is not neces- 

 sarily a symptom of national wealth." 



Taken by itself this statement is confusing. In a highly developed 

 country with a dense population the maintenance of a large forest 

 area on land needed for other purposes is as economic folly. We 

 cannot conceive of such a condition in any modern society, par- 

 ticularly in countries which do not liave a landed nobility. In Ger- 

 many, Austria, and other parts of central Europe, there may have 

 been large areas kept in forest for game preserves and withheld 

 from other use. In democratic countries like ours, however, where 

 the operation of economic laws has freer sway, the withholding of 

 lands from higher use is bound to break down sooner or later, and 

 the land will find the use to which it is best adapted. There are now 

 large areas of cut-over land, much of it not suited for agriculture, 

 in the hands of lumber and land companies. These lands are being 

 unloaded on settlers, who in many cases eventually lose their earn- 

 ings and abandon their lands. Those owners of cut-over lands who 

 try to apply them to a use for which they are unfit are the ones who 

 prevent an orderly economic development. Such non-agricultural 

 lands, possibly after much sufifering and loss on the part of those who 



