A NATlONAIv POLICY FOR FORESTERS 749 



As foresters we lack the courage of our convictions. We all studied 

 the evidence of statistics a year or two ago and found out that this 

 nation is in a bad fix for timber. We know that in 50 years or so a 

 severe timber shortage will hit the country. We know further that 

 nothing under heaven can stop it. Yet we advocate a policy of "put- 

 tering." We hide our heads in the sands of the lands given to us for 

 forestry and try to delude ourselves into believing that we can grow 

 saw-log material in 50 years. We will not admit that which we know 

 to be true. We forget that where we have one acre of soil so good that 

 log material will develop in 50 years, that we have 25 acres of land 

 where it takes a hundred or more years to grow 15-inch stuff. We like 

 to figure on trees that can be grown in a jifify, like the East Indian 

 magician flips a cherry tree into the air with a colored boy picking 

 fruit from the branches to the delight of the villagers clustering around. 



We put forth baits in the shape of good returns on forest invest- 

 ments. We try to excuse our existence as foresters by guaranteeing 

 net returns from the National Forests. 



We will not reckon on the fact that the growth to replace our de- 

 stroyed forests has not even started as yet. We refuse to believe, 

 apparently, that even with the most energetic beginnings and sustained 

 efforts, that we cannot possibly, within a hundred years, grow as much 

 timber per year as we will use or will wish to use. 



We plead with the agronomist for a little "absolute" forest land. 

 We make soil classifications to see if possibly we cannot scrape to- 

 gether a few acres for forestry. The benefit of the doubt is always 

 given to somebody other than to the forester. We give it to the land 

 "shark," the "boomer," the "come-hither-and-prosper" artist. The 

 forester tacitly admits that the leavings, the dregs, js all the land that 

 he is entitled to have for his forests. 



To inhibit a national shortage of timber we ask only for more 

 efficient utilization, for low stumps, for the practice of a little silvi- 

 culture in the woods. We plead with the timberland owners to employ 

 a forester or two, and to save a few seedlings when logging. This 

 attitude is precisely akin to a people under an autocracy begging the 

 ruler not to starve them to death. 



Our Forest Service enlists us all to obtain some data on the mini- 

 mum silvicultural requirements needed to perpetuate our forests. 

 What we were obtaining data on in reality, and trying to find out, was 

 not minimum silvicultural requirements, but rather that maximum 

 forest devastation which could be practiced conveniently and still be 



