SOME SOCIAL ASPECTS OF FOREST MANAGEMENT 

 By Benton MacKaye 



Recent symptoms of unrest among the timber workers in the North- 

 west and elsewhere have revealed a new problem for the American 

 forester. It is the problem of the lumberjack. Our forest schools in 

 their processes of turning out foresters have courses in silviculture, 

 mensuration, dendrology, protection, influences, management, utilization, 

 lumbering, etc; but the lumberjack himself and the very human prob- 

 lems that go with him do not occur in the curriculum. It may require 

 a later age to reduce these matters to the text-book, but out in what 

 we call "real life" they must be faced without waiting for book knowl- 

 edge. 



The Forest Service in its administration of the National Forests has 

 undoubtedly done some yeoman service on the human side of the in- 

 tricate problems with which it has had to deal. This is evidenced in 

 the aid given to the "small" stockman in the use of the range, to the 

 struggling settler in the shoestring meadows, to the "hardy prospector" 

 on his mineral claim, and even to the lumberjack himself by providing 

 for sanitary camps on National Forest operations. In all this the 

 spirit has been willing, but for the most part it is aid rather than a 

 solution which has been given. Compared with what the agriculturist 

 has solved for the agricultural worker, how much has the forester 

 solved for the forest worker ? 



The labor situation with which the nation has had to deal in the 

 present crisis has perhaps been more acute in the lumber industry than 

 in any other. Aside from the general causes of industrial unrest, 

 which we will leave to the economist and the sociologist, there is one 

 cause which is of interest to the forester. At least one basic reason for 

 discontent among timber workers is the condition of unstable employ- 

 ment in the lumber industry itself. This is something that every for- 

 ester knows. He knows also that this condition will continue so long 

 as the forest industry is conducted as one of harvesting or "mining" 

 timber and not of reproducing and cropping timber. 



Foresters have long preached timber cropping versus timber mining. 



We have pointed out over and over again the present damage and the 



future danger of a depleted timber supply, of unregulated streamflow, 



and of other so-called economic maladjustments. It is true also that 



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