ORGANIZATION FOR NATIONAL CONTROL 247 



perpetuation. The reasons for including such matters in the Com- 

 mittee's plan will be explained in a later article. 



WITHDRAWAL O? CONTROL 



The opponents of the plan have generally overlooked the clause 

 which provides for the withdrawal of Government control whenever 

 an organized forest unit has proved its ability to stop forest devastation. 

 The Committee considered this provision to be of far-reaching im- 

 portance, and looked upon it as a guiding principle. It expresses the 

 belief that Government supervision of the lumber industry, whether 

 Federal or State, is a necessary evil, a thing to be enforced only so 

 long as may be essential to bring the operations of the industry into 

 harmony with the public interest. While convinced that injuries to the 

 public welfare could be remedied only through compulsory and nation- 

 wide legislation, the Committee believed that the lumber industry 

 should again be given a free hand to work out its own salvation as 

 soon as it had shown itself willing and able permanently to keep its 

 forest lands productive. By "organized forest unit" is meant any 

 large holding of commercial timberland, or a group of such holdings, 

 or a natural economic forest unit, such, for example, as the Puget 

 Sound district, or the Idaho-Montana white pine district, or the North- 

 eastern spruce district, or parts of such districts. The size of the units 

 was considered of minor importance, the idea being that whenever a 

 forest area was made continuously productive, thus insuring industrial 

 permanency, Government supervision should be withdrawn. 



THE REGULATION OF WOODLOTS 



It has been argued that there is no good reason for excluding farm- 

 ers' woodlots from the operation of the law. The Committee thought 

 that it might be wise to exclude them, at least in the beginning, for 

 two reasons. First, their control was considered impracticable from 

 the administrative point of view until the organization had matured. 

 Second, the average farmer is not inclined to devastate his wooded 

 property. He endeavors to keep trees growing upon it and, in a rough 

 way, he usually succeeds. The difficulty of drawing a line between 

 farmers' woodlots and commercial timberlands, especially in parts of 

 the South, was recognized ; but the Committee regarded this as a detail 

 for which a fairly simple solution could be found. 



