A LKSSOxNT IN FOREST ECONOMY 251 



obtained almost for nothing. Can we afford to destroy an important 

 natural resource with our eyes open? I say No, without hesitation. 

 If we admit that forests yield (a) direct financial benefits to the 

 individual and (b) indirect benefits to the people who control the 

 nation, it is clear that the best policy for (a) the individual is to co- 

 operate with (b) the public. Dr. Compton would have been on firmer 

 and safer ground if he had advocated the following simple policy: 



A. Increase very largely the acreage of public forests (and secure 

 liberal appropriations to make this possible). 



B. Restrain the individual in the destruction of his property where it 

 injures the public, but co-operate with him, in return for the indirect 

 and direct benelts received, by wise taxation, by protection, and by 

 just legislation. 



"An Answer to Dr. Compton's Fourteen Points" was given by X. 

 in the December, 1919, Journai, of Forestry. Those who still believe 

 in the fourteen points would do well to read the arguments presented 

 by an anonymous writer, and the time has come when it will pay the 

 lumberman to be well informed. But to my mind the best constructive 

 answer and argument is to give sound forest economics side by side 

 with what is clearly fallacious, shallow, and unsafe. This I have done 

 in the table below, and it should be noted that the eleven points are 

 based largely on the forest history of France — a sister republic — and 

 on French forest policy. Unquestionably there are exceptions to these 

 principles but it is believed they are quite generally correct for the 

 temperate zone, and contrasted with Dr. Compton's economics -they 

 constitute a good lesson. But when we come to apply these to the 

 tropics there is much that is doubtful. For example, Dr. Huntington 

 of Yale University, in his book on "The Climate Factor," showed that 

 in Guatemala probably the increase in rainfall and the growth of 

 tropical forests tended to destroy the then existing civilization rather 

 than to build it up ! 



Dr. Compton's Fourteen Points. Some Sound Forest Economics.^ 



1. "There are already local shortages 1. No greab nation can prosper 

 of standing timber and there will be without controlling forest destruction 

 more. The removal of the original and without practicing forestry. De- 

 forests from the soil of the United cadent nations (outside the tropical 

 States without provision for forest zone about which we know little) have 

 renewal on much ('most' in American no considerable areas of valuable for- 



3 From "Studies in French Forestry," soon to be published by John Wiley & 

 Sons, 432 Fourth Avenue, New York City. 



