DR. compton's Fourteen points 959 



being used for agriculture, is economic waste. If such idleness is 

 accompanied, as in the case of cut-over lands, by accumulation of vast 

 areas in the hands of a few people, in face of rising prices for food 

 and other raw materials, it is a social menace. At the bottom of the 

 present world unrest is land monopoly. The breaking up of large 

 landed estates into small units for use by tillers of the soil and actual 

 settlers is the cry of the people of Europe today. Poland, Czecho- 

 slovakia, Jugo-Slavia, Roumania, Hungary, Russia, and even Eng- 

 land, are already in the midst of such land reforms. Is the lumber 

 industry, which by its present methods converts productive land into 

 idle land and leaves it concentrated in large areas held by a few own- 

 ers, willing to assume the responsibility of adding to the unrest in this 

 country ? 



10. "Idleness of other of the cut-over timber lands is the inevitable 

 result of clearing the forest from lands upon which regrowing of a 

 new forest zvoiild be poor private economy." 



There may be lands now owned by lumbermen upon which private 

 owners cannot profitably grow timber. If public welfare, as Dr. 

 Compton suggests, requires that these lands be forested, one may be 

 permitted to wonder why private operators should ever be permitted 

 to clear them in the first place. Even if cutting of merchantable 

 timber on such lands is permissible, it should not be construed as 

 license to devastate. For decades now, foresters have insisted that 

 "greater enlightenment of some owners of cut-over timber lands 

 would induce them, out of plain self-interest to foster on their own 

 now idle lands reforestation by natural replacement, encouraged by 

 protection against fire and ravage." It is to be hoped that the en- 

 lightenment may come before it is too late. 



11. "The owner of private property in timberlands, legally ac- 

 quired, is under no different or greater public obligation permanently 

 to use his land to grozv timber than the obligation of the owner of 

 agricultural land to use his land to grow farm crops if the growing 

 of such crops is unprofitable." 



Dr. Compton confuses the public obligation of an individual with 

 that of an economic group or class. An individual farmer or an 

 individual timber owner of course is under no public obligation to 

 remain permanently in the business of growing timber or crops if it 

 is against his personal interests. As long, however, as the farmer 



