FOREST REGULATION 493 



is an ideal scheme to be followed wherever possible. By its applica- 

 tion all other demands of regulation are subserved. The continuity 

 of established sawmills will be as well assured as with larger working 

 circles, and the ultimate consumer will likewise be protected. 



The small circle scheme will stimulate local logging communities. 

 Permanent work in one locality will give men a chance to satisfy a 

 natural desire for settling down. Small communities not only carrying 

 on logging but incidentally supporting people who serve the needs of 

 the woods workers will start, thrive, and continue, as has already hap- 

 pened in many localities. In the Coeur d'Alene region, because of the 

 drifting labor, the maintenance of logging communities is very impor- 

 tant. The immediate effect on labor by the war emphasized this; the 

 problem was a very difficult one even before the war, however, and will 

 undoubtedly continue for some time. 



The idea of developing community, and ultimately through it, family 

 life for woods workers is not at all a new one. But it is thought that 

 the Coeur d'Alene National Forest working plan is the first one that 

 actually endeavors to provide for it as far as it may be influenced by 

 the bases of the regulation of cut. One of the chief risks in the logging 

 industry would be obviated if the woods worker would change into a 

 settler instead of a nomad. 



The big factor, however, is the fact that several communities are 

 already established of which the greatest percentage of the population 

 is dependent on the logging industry. The city of Coeur d'Alene, with 

 a population of about 7,000, lying just outside the forest, at about the 

 middle point of the western boundary, established originally on the 

 strength of the logging industry, has been slowly retrograding as 

 nearby timber tracts have been cut out, but still has a large population 

 which finds its work in the National Forest adjacent. Similarly situated 

 are smaller communities and groups of permanent settlers for whom 

 the logging industry is the principal bread-winning activity, and in 

 several localities the owners of the partly developed stump farms eke 

 out their incomes by work in the woods at certain seasons. 



The policy decided, the first step in figuring out the working circles 

 on the Coeur d'AJcne Forest was to determine approximately where, as 

 influenced by topography and transportation, existing logging commu- 

 nities would be maintained or others possibly established in the future. 



With a rather intensive development of the idea in mind, the forest 

 divides itself naturally into six working circles. These are (a) the ter- 



