32 Pioneers and Principles 



adopting improved managerial practices that can be regarded as 

 clearly in the public interest, has been unexpectedly rapid. The Code 

 of Fair Competition for the Lumber and Timber Products Industries, 

 which was adopted under the short-lived National Industrial Recovery 

 Act of 1933 and which pledged the industries "to carry out such prac- 

 ticable measures as may be necessary for the declared purposes of this 

 Code in respect of conservation and sustained production of forest 

 resources," may have had something to do with the change. So, too, 

 as Dr. Griffith suggests, may the threat of federal control and the 

 partial reality of state control. The principal reason, however, for 

 improved practices by private owners — whether of forest, range, or 

 mineral lands — is economic. Growing scarcities, higher prices, and 

 improved technologies of harvesting and manufacturing make more 

 intensive management a paying proposition in coin of the realm. 

 Financial profit exercises more influence on the behavior of the pri- 

 vate landowner as a land manager than do the police power of the 

 state, education, and sentiment combined. Intensive management was 

 not practiced until recently because the owner felt that he could not 

 afford it; today it is being practiced more widely, although far from 

 universally, with consequent promotion of the "public interest," be- 

 cause it pays. 



Let me conclude with a summary of the salient points I have tried 

 to make : The objective of conservation of natural resources is to pro- 

 mote the "public interest." Because of the many diverse, often con- 

 flicting, factors involved, that interest is difficult to identify and harder 

 still to attain in practice. During the latter part of the last century the 

 ground was well prepared for the flowering of the conservation move- 

 ment that took place in the early 1900's. In the fifty years that have 

 elapsed since the Governors' Conference of 1908, progress has been 

 intermittent but on the whole reasonably steady. We have come a long 

 way, but we still have a long way to go. 



Judgments as to relative values are gradually maturing; the poten- 

 tialities and limitations of multiple use, sustained yield, and intensive 

 management are being better appreciated; research is sharpening the 

 tools of land management and making possible greater economy in 

 utilization. Most important of all, public agencies (both federal and 

 state) and private owners, in spite of recurring misunder3tandings and 



