226 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



eating compulsory forestry on privately owned forests, by either Fed- 

 eral or State control, lies in the assumption that forest products are 

 "an absolute necessity of life," and that a shortage in such products 

 would be a dire calamity. An important question, and one which per- 

 haps has not been sufficiently canvassed, is to what extent the engineer- 

 ing profession would accept this thesis of the foresters as to the 

 "absolute necessity" of forest products ; also of value in this connection 

 would be the ideas of the engineers concerning ways of making forest 

 products go much further, if need be, by different methods, such as 

 preservative treatment, fire-proofing, careful utilization, etc.^ It is said, 

 for instance, that black paper with white ink (much better for the eyes) 

 would make it possible to use any kind of wood for newsprint, and 

 that the same paper could be used over again many times. 



A forester in one of the leading railroad systems of the country 

 once made the statement that the engineers in his organization had the 

 best of the argument on the negative side of the question of the neces- 

 sity for forest products for construction purposes and, in fact, for 

 any purpose whatsoever, as they could always supply a good substitute 

 for, or an improvement on wood. These practical engineers admitted, 

 however, the value of forests for wild game and sporting purposes. 

 While this is an exaggerated point of view, there is considerable truth 

 in it. There is also considerable truth and common sense in the state- 

 ment that : The sooner we get complete devastation of forests, or 

 an approach to it, the quicker we will get real sincere forestry by 

 private as well as public owners, and forestry will come to stay because 

 it will become profitable to grow timber. This so-called devastation 

 means, in practical language, merely the removal of the large supplies 

 of stored up virgin timber. As a matter of fact, the desolation dreaded 

 by some foresters will never take place, due to the bounteous provisions 

 of nature, aided by man's practical fire protective measures. 



It is interesting to note what England is doing in the way of for- 

 estry. This is a country provided most inadequately with forests, and 

 the most dependent on other countries for forest products, of any in 



' Howard F. Weiss, the forest products engineer, in the Journal of Forestry 

 for October proposes to secure forest management by creating such a demand 

 for the products of the forest that the price received for them will more than 

 equal the cost of growing and producing them. In other words, an important 

 cause of forest devastation is the poor possibility for intensive utilization of 

 forest crops, which obtains especially in forested regions remote from markets. 



