044 JOURNAl^ OF FORKSTRY 



has not yet recorded a single instance in which economic injustice has 

 produced prosperity for any country as a whole or which has in- 

 creased the supply of necessary goods and materials. 



One of the most recent instances of this sort is the housing situation 

 in New York City. Everyone is familiar — and many painfully fa- 

 miliar — with the increases in rents which occurred last year and the 

 general cry for more building of places in which people might live. 

 New York City secured a special session of the State Legislature and 

 the enactment of drastic laws, which were designed to prevent the 

 owners of rented buildings from getting what was deemed to be more 

 than a fair profit upon their investment. The bills were passed by the 

 Legislature almost immediately upon presentation, signed in still less 

 time by the Governor, and everybody went home with the general 

 claim by the newspapers that the situation had been relieved. Some 

 people were undoubtedly protected from having their rents raised ex- 

 orbitantly, but the main problem was to have more apartments and 

 houses built in which people could live. The result was that during 

 the month of January, 1921, not a single permit was issued for the 

 construction of an apartment building on Manhattan Island, and rents 

 in such buildings continued as high or even higher than before, while 

 at the same time a large number of modern office buildings were going 

 up and office rents coming down precipitately. In other words, the 

 investor refused to put his money into apartment buildings and did 

 put it into office buildings. A recent act exempting lower-cost dwellings 

 from taxation for a period of years has greatly stimulated building. 



The same course of reasoning applies to the forestry problem in the 

 United States. Were there a timber monopoly, as some insist, the 

 only successful antidote for it is the creation of conditions under which 

 more people will begin the growing of different kinds of timber 

 throughout the country. It is the creation of these conditions that 

 the National Forestry Program Committee seeks and this is what I 

 mean when I say that the principle of Federal leadership and assist- 

 ance with State and private cooperation is a workable and effective 

 solution of a pro])lem that must be solved, if the basic industries of 

 this country are to have an adequate supply of raw material. 



This program is opposed by a few radical foresters who say that 

 it will be inefifective because it lacks compulsion — an opinion incapable 

 of proof — and by many lumbermen who declare that it is a step in the 

 direction of invasion of vested rights. 



