32 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



Thus, if we can make the public realize what the cost of the lack of 

 permanent forest management is in the terms of humanity, it will not 

 be necessary to express this loss in dollars and cents. This loss shows 

 in the character of the community which is left behind, and in the 

 labor conditions of the lumber industry. As an illustration of the 

 former, I will describe the conditons of one community which I, at 

 one time, knew very intimately. 



This small mountain valley was originally well timbered with spruce 

 and good northern hardwoods. The small areas of cleared land were 

 considered farms in those days of farming by hand. The soil was 

 fertile, but the side-hill-dodger could travel on it much easier than oui 

 modern farm machines. The early settlers were evidently of our 

 good, energetic, Yankee stock, if we can judge by the houses they 

 built, their photographs which still hang in the unused parlors, and 

 the few grandmothers who are still living. 



The condition we now find in this valley is not one we like to admit 

 has grown out of the one just pictured. Destructive lumbering has 

 reduced most of the forest to culled stands and young second-growth, 

 the latter a pure gift of the gods. Forest fires swept across the head 

 of the valle}', taking much of the remaining spruce and leaving a trail 

 of barren rock behind. As a result most of the energetic, courageous 

 and far-seeing young people migrated. With few exceptions, the re- 

 maining individuals lacked the courage to move. Decrease in cash 

 crop, discouragement, and whiskey caused increasingly poorer farm- 

 ing and poorer cooking, malnutrition, decreasing energy, and poorer 

 schools. All these factors intensified by intermarriage formed an in- 

 clined plane shooting downward towards a degenerate community. 



This is not an isolated case, but is only one of many communities 

 which I have found in similar or worse conditon. Neither are such 

 communities confined to any particular State. Every time I have 

 had an opportunity to study one of these communities, I have been 

 able to trace the primary cause to the fact that the economic basis 

 had dropped out from under it. 



The cost of destructive lumbering and forest fires to the community 

 dependent on the products of a forest soil is their physical, mental, and 

 moral bankruptcy. The cost to the larger community is even harder 

 to estimate. Of course, such communities have to have proportionally 

 more help on roads and schools. It is supposed that such communities 

 contribute more than their proportion of the inmates of our reform 

 schools and insane hospitals. They certainly do not contribute their 

 share of energy and progress to the larger community. 



