DR. COMPTOX'S FOURTEKX POINTS 'M)0 



million acres suitable lo grow timber are put under forest manage- 

 ment without delay. It has become almost axiomatic with the econ- 

 omists of Europe (although we think faultily) that an area in forests 

 equal lo one-fourth of the total land area constitutes the minimum 

 essential for the welfare of a country, both for supplies of raw ma- 

 terial and because of the effect of forests on the surrounding region. 



6. "The disappearance of forest industries in certain regions be- 

 cause of exhaustion of nearby timber supplies is not )iecessarily either 

 a local or national misfortune." 



Disappearance of forest industries is not necessarily a misfortune, 

 providina that there is something to take their place. In many locali- 

 ties denuded by the lumber industry nothing has or can take the place 

 of forest production. It should not be forgotten that labor and capi- 

 tal cannot produce wealth by themselves — they must have raw ma- 

 terial, that is, land or its products — to work with. It is an economic 

 waste to let land be idle and non-productive when with a very small 

 outlay of labor and capital it could continuously produce raw ma- 

 terials to keep other labor and capital profitably employed. 



Of the approximately 380 million acres of cut-over land in the' 

 country, 100 million acres are unproductive wastes. Would Dr. Comp- 

 ton contend that these 100 million acres are not an economic waste? 

 The trouble with his argument is that he fails to understand that there 

 is an essential difference between the lumber industry and other 

 manufacturing industries. Manufacture of hats, for instance, may 

 be transferred from one locality to another, with comparatively small 

 loss to the nation or to the locality. It is economic folly to argue that 

 the production of lumber can be concentrated on the North Pacific 

 Coast or the production of all our food in the Central Prairie region. 

 The production of both agricultural and forest crops needs large 

 areas of land and a product of the soil can be replaced in our eco- 

 nomic life only with other products of the same soil. If agriculture 

 does not follow timber growing, as it seldom does on poor soils, 

 or other forest growth does not follow, the land is non-productive 

 and therefore an absolute economic waste. It is not merely because 

 of "'local pride" that the Lake States should deplore the reduction to 

 sandy deserts of once magnificent forests of valuable species. It is 

 because of the desolate villages, decrease in population and general 

 economic ruin for the entire region. 



