LAISSEZ FAIRE VS. FORESIGHT IN FOREST MANAGEMENT 293 



So many points are touched upon throughout Gary's discussion 

 that no efifort will be made to take up each in detail. As a basis for 

 further argument it will first be noted that Gary shows much evidence 

 of having fallen into the current fallacy, now quite common, of 

 believing that because there is more timber in private hands than 

 can be realized upon cjuickly at a profit, or in some cases at cost to 

 the investor, that there must therefore be an excessive national supply. 

 It is true enough that there is very much more mature timber than 

 v/ould be needed if we had provided in the past young stands to come 

 to maturity and furnish our annual cut after the present mature timber 

 is cut. Even as we stand, most foresters lay emphasis on measures to 

 assist in marketing our mature timber at a profit today and at the 

 same time on providing for tomorrow's supply by keeping our forest 

 lands producing. With this latter point in view let us examine for a 

 moment this question from the standpoint of national supply. In so 

 doing it will be assumed that we shall use as much timber annually 

 in the future as we do now if we can get it at reasonable price. This 

 is to assume that our standards of living are to be maintained in the 

 future (which it is hoped is a safe assumption) and that the inroads 

 of substitutes will not more than offset our increase in population. 

 The question of the substitutes will be briefly dealt with later. Every, 

 one knows that in order to produce saw timber there must always be 

 on hand in the woods a large stock of standing timber. The question 

 here is how much must be our national stock in order to maintain our 

 present annual production. In order to ascertain this there seems no 

 reason why we should not apply the formula — Annual growing stocks: 

 rotation X ann ual increment ^ ^^ maintain our present cut. annual 



increment must equal this cut in the long run. It seems clear that taking 

 all our forests, including such areas as the Rocky Mountain, New 

 England,, and the South, into consideration, that SO years would be 

 the minimum average rotation that could be assured. If so, a normal 

 growing stock upon which to base a continuous yield (equal to our 

 present cut) must be forty times this annual cut plus woods and mill 

 waste plus annual fire loss plus loss from insects and fungi plus wind- 

 fall and other miscellaneous drains. Space does not permit detailed 

 analysis of the most recent figures showing the total drain on our 

 forests and, moreover, the writer does not wish to sow here the seeds 

 of an additional controversy over details. He will, therefore, rely on 

 the old rough figure of 100 billion feet b. m. annual consumption. 



