REVIEWS 74:1 



Broadly speaking, the answer to the problem of exports is "identical 

 with the remedy for depletion through domestic consumption, namely, 

 not to restrict the use, but to increase the production of timber by 

 getting all forest-growing land at work." The report is not clearly 

 specific in its conclusions as to an export trade policy. It implies the 

 desirability of regulation of certain high grade products and says : 

 "If the export trade in lumber is to be regulated, such regulation 

 should be discriminating and should apply to the grades and products 

 in which a shortage is most imminent and most menacing to domestic 

 industries." 



The last specific inquiry contained in the Senate resolution is whether 

 forest depletion tends to increase concentration in the lumber industry, 

 and if "concentration exists how it affects or may affect the public 

 interests. 



Our general lumber market is chiefly supplied from large manu- 

 facturing plants, backed by bodies of timber in large individual owner- 

 ship. The existence of extensive tracts of forest land privately owned 

 has frequently been a source of 'uneasiness on the part of the public 

 lest they should constitute the basis for dangerous monopolies. The 

 enormous holdings acquired, especially in the West, during the nineties, 

 provided a basis for this public anxiety and led to a federal inquiry 

 whose results were published in a series of reports of the Bureau of 

 Corporations in ]911 to 1914. It is natural and inevitable that in a 

 period of great market disturbance and high lumber prices, questions 

 would be raised whether the existence of large land holdings are in 

 any way responsible, just as happens in the case of steel, oil, and coal. 



The change of Government policy regarding the Federal forest lands 

 placed a sharj) check on the acquisition of large bodies of public timber, 

 and the building up of great proj)erties by assembling through purchase 

 lands privately held was by lit 10 largely halted by the verv burden 

 of carrying long-term timber investments. The Forest vService finds 

 that since the investigation of the Bureau of Corporations the situa- 

 tion as to timber owncrshii) has not materiallv changed. The present 

 tendency is against the accumulation of. very large tracts for s])ecula- 

 tion. The tendency is rather to put the timber on an operating basis. 

 In some cases tlie timber holders are becoming operators, in otlier 

 cases new interests are purchasing from the large holders or consoli- 

 dating tracts into desirable operating units. There appears therefore 

 no marked tendency toward monopoly merely through the extension 

 of individual timber ownership. 



