300 JOURNAL OF kore;stry 



price manipulations, especially when taken in conjunction with the 

 large areas of communal forests, and to produce material of species 

 or sizes which private owners cannot grow at a profit. 



The State is in no financial condition to buy the private forests, even 

 by a bond issue, since forest properties will not pay a return as high 

 as the interest rate on bonds ; confiscation without recompense to the 

 owners is unthinkable. 



Another proposal is to syndicalize the forests — turn them over to 

 the forest workers. This is far less practicable with forestry than 

 with other industries, because of the nature of the crop, which makes 

 it impossible to discover and correct mistakes in less than 100 years, in 

 many cases. The standing timber is both capital and product, with no 

 sharply drawn line to distinguish between the two ; overcutting, which 

 would be likely, would be equivalent to destroying the machinery in a 

 factory, but could not be remedied as quickly or easily. Forest industry 

 does not permit year-long employment for most of the workers, since 

 lumbering is mostly done in winter, for silvicultural reasons. The in- 

 terest of the general public in forest properties, now represented by 

 the taxes received from them, could not be as readily maintained if 

 they were syndicalized. 



Still another proposal is to divide up the forests. There is no such 

 reason for this in Germany as in Russia or Hungary, where holdings 

 of 20 to 40,000 hectares are common, and besides, small units are 

 contrary to the fundamental requirements of efficient forest production. 



The conclusion is that the great diversity of forest industry precludes 

 the schematic treatment and bureaucratism inevitable with socialization, 

 but that the best means for a democratic state to control the industry 

 is through its powers of taxation. Forest owners must not overlook 

 the justifiable demands of the socialists, which can be met by adoption 

 of an up-to-date forest law to guard against misuse of the forest, and 

 by the introduction of a reform in management on a voluntary co- 

 operative basis. The law should require that forests of more than 100 

 hectares be managed according to a working plan, under continuous 

 technical supervision. Beyond this, the owner should have entire free- 

 dom of action. For smaller tracts, the owners should have a choice 

 between co-operative bodies or the looser form of forestry associations. 

 These societies, federated on a nation-wide democratic basis, would 

 make available the best technical assistance even for the smallest own- 

 ers, and would afford other advantages, such as easy credit terms to 



