58 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



Again this will be said to be special legislation. Well and good, 

 that is to say that this industry is to be dealt with according to its 

 needs and merits. It embodies a very special case in industry, dealing 

 as it does with a raw material which though reproduced with ease takes 

 a half century or more in the production. Special foresight is thus 

 required and special methods of physical organization of producing 

 units in order to secure annual yield from each under these conditions. 

 We have, moreover, ample precedent for legislation according to needs 

 of particular industries. The railroads have been dealt with by an enor- 

 mous body of special legislation. Yet the public service differs only 

 in degree between that industry which supplies the material to erect 

 a roof over our heads and that which transports the material. But 

 we do not have to go to transportation industries for examples. Agri- 

 culture is subject to a mass of special legislation. Here, however, 

 the government has chosen to do for the industry instead of letting it 

 solve its own problems. Here too, we see the paternalistic attitude 

 most highly developed. While the American farmer is still self reliant 

 it is evident more and more that the government is being looked to 

 solve the difficult problems. How long the quality of self reliance can 

 last under these conditions is a question. 



There is also being built up a body of water-power legislation, while 

 other industries are coming in for their special treatmeht. This is as 

 it should be. It would undoubtedly be more unwise to repeal the 

 Sherman anti-trust law than it is to make it a blanket to cover every- 

 thing. In those industries where organization is inevitable and the only 

 solution of the problem, the Sherman law should be removed as a bar to 

 those looser and more democratic forms of organization which will leave 

 the individual concern free to develop its own type of efficiency and yet 

 will secure the results necessary in certain fields such as have been discussed 

 in forest industry. Without release from the prohibition of the Sherman 

 law we shall eventually get organization on the one-big-company idea as 

 we already have it in steel and oil. 



Both our ability to organize industry and the maintenance of our 

 resources in producing condition have a broader industrial significance 

 than in those regards so far touched upon. Recently much discussion 

 has been heard regarding the United States taking a larger place in 

 world trade. Much of this discussion is of so vague a nature that its 

 real aims are impossible to state in specific terms. Apparently there 

 is quite a general idea that we should follow industrially in the foot- 

 steps of England and Germany, which means to a great extent the impor- 



