THE NEED FOR UNDERSTANDING 257 



The question concerning mandatory enterprise, in forestry or in any 

 other activity, is, I think, fundamentally one of its efficacy, rather than 

 of its legality or its morality, or its constitutionality. With respect to 

 the Constitution, I am free to admit the correctness of my critic's 

 inference that I have some regard for that instrument. But I doubt 

 whether constitutionality, in the matter in issue, is either in question 

 or in point. Economically the sole issue is : Will mandatory private 

 enterprise solve our problem, or help to solve it? 



This is perhaps the key to the opposing vievv^points which discussion 

 of this subject has revealed. As Mr. X. has pointed out, I think cor- 

 rectly : Private forestry under any given conditions is either profitable 

 or not profitable. To quote his statement : 



"An individual farmer or an individual timber owner, of course is 

 under no public obligation to remain permanently in the business of 

 growing timber or crops if it is against his personal interest. * * * 

 As classes, however, farmers as well as timberland owners are under 

 public obligation to continue producing crops. * * * If in individual 

 cases timber can be grown on the land only at a financial loss, one of 

 two things must be true ; either the land can be put to some other use 

 which does not involve a loss, and should therefore not be considered 

 potential forest land, or it cannot be owned by the individual except 

 at a loss, in which case it is difficult to see why the owner should want 

 to keep it." 



I cannot escape the conviction that if private enterprise will not solve 

 our problem, when private enterprise is not mandatory, it will not solve 

 it if private enterprise is made comptdsory. This is true no more and 

 no less of forestry than it is of any other kind of business enterprise. 



If private enterprise in forestry is profitable, and to the extent to 

 which it is so, it will seek and should have access to the field. To the 

 extent to which it is not profitable, the efifort to compel it by making 

 it mandatory is futile. It is chasing the mirage ! 



The necessary and universal result of such policy would be a change 

 in the ownership of the lands upon which forestry by private enterprise 

 would thus be compulsory but could not be profitably practiced. Public 

 ownership would simply succeed private ownership. But we would 

 still have our same old problem. A mere change in land ownership 

 will not solve the timber problem. It will not put trees where trees 

 were not before. Forests are not made by legislation. 



.'\ forest policy, as a matter of legislation, might, it is true, bo adopted 

 that would make timber culture on private lands compulsory. But 



