()08 JOURNAL Oi" FORESTRY 



to the solution of the question as a whole and, for the moment, may 

 be put aside as being of secondary concern. 



The provision for direct national control, however, can not be put 

 aside. It is the outstanding feature of the whole plan, and this pro- 

 posal constitutes a difference of fundaijiental importance between the 

 Committee's program and all others. In the plans of the Forest Service 

 and the American Paper and Pulp Association the power and authority 

 to stop forest devastation is vested in the separate States ; in the Com- 

 mittee's plan this power and authority rests with the Federal Govern- 

 ment. Although the thing to be attained is precisely the same in all 

 three plans — namely, compulsory governmental control over private 

 forest lands — the machinery through which control is to be applied 

 differs radically. 



Opponents of the Committee's program have argued that its consti- 

 tutionality is in doubt, to which the Conimittee has replied that the 

 best of legal advice points to its constitutionality upon several grounds 

 and that, at any rate, it is futile to argue the matter unless and until 

 it comes before the Supreme Court, the only body capable of rendering 

 a final decision. The plan has been called un-American and undemo- 

 cratic, which has been met by the statement that the Nation has already 

 solved many similar big problems in a similar way without having lost 

 any appreciable amount of x\mericanism, and that national control is 

 more democratic than any other provided, always, that the adminis- 

 tration of that control is made intensely local, as it should and could 

 be made. It has been objected that friction would arise in case pro- 

 tection against fire were left largely to the States, and the prevention 

 of destructive lumbering to the Federal Govesfiment. To this the 

 Committee has answered that no plan can be devised which would 

 eliminate altogether the possibility of friction; and it has drawn 

 attention to the fact that the plan of the Forest Service involving, first, 

 subsidized dictation to the States as to how they shall legislate and 

 administer their laws to prevent forest devastation, and, second, con- 

 stant Federal inspection to see that necessary- standards of efficiency 

 are lived up to. would surely give rise to very grave friction indeed. 

 It has been suggested that under national control a set of iron-clad 

 regulations might be applied to the country as a whole, regulations 

 unsuited to the numerous peculiarities of local forest conditions. The 

 Committee has replied that such, indeed, might be the case ; but that 

 there is still enough horse sense left in the country to insure decentral- 



