LAISSEZ FAIRE VS. FORESIGHT IN FOREST MANAGEMENT 295 



of the individual which, in effect, is only surely self-indulgence and 

 egotistical self-assertions and a bad excuse for bad education and bad 

 breeding."^ Besides our increasingly successful efforts at the control 

 of transportation and other public service corporations we are soon 

 to see the establishment of a zone system in cities whereby industrial, 

 residential, and business areas will be established. Further indica- 

 tion of this same trend is the experience of the present national ad- 

 ministration which expected to realize the "New Freedom" by reducing 

 the tariff to restore free competition and by then taking the hands of 

 the Government off of business. It has found it necessary to initiate 

 its reforms, however, by the Government taking more hand than ever, 

 as instanced by the formation of additional commissions to supervise 

 business. Likewise though the apparent drift of the forestry profes- 

 sion for nearly ten years has been toward the laissez faire school of 

 forest management the writer expects to see this school definitely 

 discredited in another ten years. Indeed the practice of forestry is 

 inherently opposed to hit-and-miss methods. Only superficial knowl- 

 edge of forest production is necessary to convince anyone that only 

 orderly action based on clear scientific foresight — the "supernal com- 

 monsense" of Harrington Emerson — will secure anything like the 

 full productive possibilities of the forest. Furthermore an increas- 

 ingly large and intelligent portion of the American public is coming to 

 the position set forth by Mr. Vail — that the apparent freedom obtained 

 by absence of any control means only freedom for the strong to over- 

 run the rights of the weak. It may be true that we can continue on a 

 saw-timber basis for 50 or TO years and when our timber is gone draw 

 on Siberia and the tropics, as Gary wants us to do. Possibly we can 

 get along fairly well with the tropical woods as substitutes for our own, 

 but the writer's contention is that it will be no more intelligent for us to 

 leave our timber producing plant (forest lands unsuited to agriculture) 

 be idle and send abroad for timber than it would be for the manufac- 

 turer of boots and shoes to close down his plant and pursue the same 

 policy. The first is as good and no better as a national economic 

 policy as the other is as a private business policy. Besides, international 

 trade can be carried on permanently only by the interchange of com- 

 modities. If we are to import timber we must export the product of 

 some other resource, iron manufactures, for example. 



2 Theodore N. Vail. Address to Vermont Forestry Association. American 

 Forestry, September, 1916, p. 549. 



