213 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



ernment. Provision for securing at all times the opportunity for the 

 people of the forest community to vote, wherever located, should be 

 made one of the important features of the forest working plan. Edu- 

 cational facilities also go without saying; the school-house, as well as 

 the voting booth, should follow the community. Finally comes the very 

 practical need of providing co-operative facilities to the community's 

 occupants for securing their economic welfare. If the agricultural 

 worker, through co-operative marketing of farm produce, is aided by 

 public agencies to sell his labor power, then the forest worker is entitled 

 to similar aid in selling his labor power. On the basis of a timber- 

 cropping system it should be no difficult task to organize a community 

 to meet these standards, and once so organized it will hold its integrity 

 through any number of relocations. 



Timber cropping as against timber mining requires a dependable and 

 long-time form of ownership. Generally speaking, forestry must go 

 with public ownership or control. The opportunities in this country 

 for this sort of control exist most extensively in the 150 million acres 

 of National Forests. 



The productive parts of the typical National Forest in the West con- 

 sist very largely of a patchwork of public and private holdings. And 

 if a consistent and rational forest management is to be established on 

 this patchwork — with the social aspects in mind — then some form of 

 co-operation must be effected between the various private interests in- 

 volved and the public interests represented by the respective State gov- 

 ernments and the Federal Government. The working circle within the 

 National Forest — if it is to work — must be a unit and not, like the 

 wandering minstrel, "a thing of shreds and patches." In short, the 

 interests involved must be integrated. 



It so happens that the suggestions most loudly voiced with regard 

 to a change in present National Forest policies are based upon the very 

 opposite idea from the one above discussed. Strong pressure is ever 

 working, within Congress and outside, to get the Forests "thrown open 

 to entry." Various clever means have been devised, based on all sorts 

 of excuses, for honeycombing still further what remains of the nation's 

 common property in the National Forests. The policy here propounded, 

 and to some extent applied, is one not of integration but of disintegra- 

 tion. 



One of the big problems, then, affecting the social aspects of forest 

 management is that of developing integral working units within the 

 National Forests. This may be done either through government pur- 

 chase (to a very limited extent) of enclosed private holdings, or through 



