60 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



pressing close on the means of subsistence, only the few living on the 

 backs of the masses can have the leisure for development of the arts 

 and sciences. The only way to maintain an adequate national standard 

 of living with certainty is to base it on intelligent use and conservation 

 of its natural resources. A few small nations have lived mainly by trade 

 and manufacturing, but we could proceed on the basis of no more 

 arrant folly than to believe a nation of the size of the United States can 

 so live at this stage of world development. An intelligent national 

 policy should develop its own resources to the maximum with a view to 

 permanence, sell those things to foreign countries which we are best 

 fitted to produce and receive in return the products which these coun- 

 tries can produce more economically than we. 



As to forest industry, we have much of the best forest producing 

 land in the North Temperate Zone. If we even maintain our present 

 standards of housing and industrial structures, particularly farm 

 structures, we shall need mostly not all of the permanent product for 

 ourselves but if we have any surplus it is one of the things that fore- 

 sight on oiir part will always make available to trade on advantageous 

 terms for things we need from other coimtries. 



It is axiomatic, therefore, that this resoiirce must be maintained 

 If private ownership cannot do it, then collective ownership must and 

 will, because agitation in this problem will not cease until it is solved 

 There is a field here for private ownership providing there is available 

 cheap capital, intelligent distribution of forest products, and some 

 let-up in destructive competition. I hold, with many others, that none 

 of these things can be secured in adequate degree without permission 

 on the part of the federal government to bring about some form of 

 complete cooperation. I hold further that the interests of the industry 

 are such vital public interests that the government is remiss in its 

 duty if it does not actively aid the organization in the way that will 

 be most expedient without necessitating permanently meddling in the 

 industry on a large scale. 



I have dwelt chiefly on organization as a business need, together 

 with its necessity if the forest resource is to be perpetuated and made 

 the most of. It is also a social need. In the wake of forest destruction 

 in America has followed an enormous human waste. Transient and 

 unstable industry is not an atmosphere where the family life can thrive. 

 Consequently, the old New England lumberman has been nearly 

 exterminated as a race. The former Lake States woodsman is now rare, 

 his place having been taken first by the North European, who is grad- 



