DK. COMI'TOX'S FOURTKKX I'UIXTS 5).")? 



CO)! lAiinbcrman, slated that in the New England States no other 

 crop in the last 20 years has paid half as well as the growing of tim- 

 ber. Better reasons are needed than those so far advanced, to excuse 

 Innibermen who are timber owners from the moral, social or legal 

 (>I)ligation to keep in forest production such of their lands as are 

 no<: suited for any other use, even though they do not receive specula- 

 tive returns on their investment. 



There may have been some justification in the past in using much 

 of the original billion acres of timberland in the United States as 

 a mine rather than as a crop, since it was on land needed for agri- 

 culture. We are not dealing now with the past but with the pres- 

 ent. Are we justified, in view of the shortage of raw material, and 

 the vast acreage of idle lands, frankly admitted by Dr. Compton him- 

 self, to use our remaining timber resources as a mine? 



8. "Local shrinkage of employment for labor, caused by vanishing 

 forest industries in certain regions, has been by no means an un- 

 mixed evil for labor." 



Tliis is an attempt to becloud the argument by basing it on an as- 

 sumption which is contrary to actual facts. If disappearance of the 

 lumber industry in one region were oflfset by a general expansion of 

 the industry in the country as a whole, and if the supply of labor 

 were stationary or increasing less rapidly than the demand for it, the 

 idle labor released in one region might be absorbed elsewhere, and 

 if the growth of the industry as a whole were more rapid than the 

 local shrinkage, it might have led to increased wages. It is true that 

 transfer of lumbering from the East to the West did result in higher 

 wages, because labor in the West has been less plentiful than in the 

 East, when all the demands for it are considered. But this has not 

 benefited the lumberjack, since the costs of things he had to buy were 

 high in proportion, so that it is to be doubted whether his wages have 

 enabled him to enjoy any higher standard of living in the West than 

 in the East. The migratory character of labor in the lumber indus- 

 try would rather tend to indicate that the real wage level of the 

 lumberjack is about the same in the different producing regiorts. But 

 now the lumber industry as a whole is shrinking. In the State of 

 Pennsylvania 20 years ago 23,000 men were employed in the logging 

 camps and sawmills. Today less than 10,000 are so employed. In 

 Michigan less than 20,000 men work in camps and sawmills, as against 

 nearly 50,000 thirty years ago. Similar conditions apply to the entire 

 Northeast. 



