956 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



7, "Economically the original timber in the United States is in 

 large part a 'mine' and not a 'crop.' " 



Whether by "fortuitous circumstances" or not, the fact remains 

 that three-fourths of our timberlands, the most valuable and accessi- 

 ble, are in the hands of private owners ; that 11 per cent are in the 

 hands of 3 owners ; 23 owners hold roughly 25 per cent of the tim- 

 ber, and 195 hold almost half. Three great companies own 23 per 

 cent of the timber in the Pacific Northwest. Certain big holders 

 "control great acreages near their own timber in a manner not char- 

 acterized by philanthropy." Every industrial depression in the lum- 

 ber industry increases the concentration of ownership in fewer hands. 

 Most of these timber holders are also operators and producers of 

 lumber. Dr. Compton, who has studied costs of lumber production, 

 probably knows as well as anyone that most of the fortunes made in 

 the lumber business came as a rule not from logging and milling but 

 from speculation in stumpage. Under these circumstances it will be 

 difficult even for Dr. Compton to relieve the lumbermen who own 

 these timberlands from the moral and social, if not legal, obligations 

 that ownership of a basic natural resource involves. 



If the manufacturers of lumber did not own the timberlands, the 

 growing of timber would not be their business. If the millers owned 

 the wheat fields, whose business would it be to grow the wheat? 

 Suppose the farmers as a class, not as individuals, refused to use their 

 lands to raise crops because they could make more money by engaging 

 in some other business, how long before there would be recognized 

 moral and social anl even legal obligation to put the farm lands to 

 use for food production? 



There is this important difference between farmers and lumbermen. 

 Most farm owners, whether they practice poor or good farming, at- 

 tempt to keep their land in a productive condition. Even though 

 farmers as a class, at least until recently, have received an extremely 

 low rate of return on their investment compared with that received 

 in other industrial lines, they realize that it is to their "self-interest," 

 of which Dr. Compton is such an advocate — to keep their land pro- 

 ductive, while timber owners who are harvesting a crop which was 

 a free gift of nature, do not concern themselves with keeping the 

 land productive. 



There are already enough data on hand to show that the growing 

 of timber by private owners is at least as profitable an enterprise 

 as the growing of crops. Mr. Bartlett, in a recent issue of the Ameri- 



