A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 33 



That of the farm woodlands, mainly of the Central States, is a 

 decision between range use, the main benefit of which is the shade 

 that could be obtained from a much smaller area, and timber growing 

 which is impossible with heavy range use. 



THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 



THE FORESTRY MOVEMENT HANDICAPPED BY LACK OF KNOWLEDGE 



Lack of knowledge of the inevitable consequences has been one 

 among the many factors responsible for the public policy of allowing 

 excessive areas of forest land to go into private ownership. 



It has been partly responsible also for allowing large areas of land 

 to go into agriculture which were submarginal for that purpose and 

 which should have been kept in forest. 



Still further, it has been partly responsible for the delay in putting 

 under administration forest land remaining in the Federal public 

 domain and for the delay by the States in recognizing and providing 

 for the still larger area which by reversion to public ownership via 

 the tax delinquency route is becoming a new public domain. 



Lack of knowledge has been one of the factors which has led private 

 owners to adopt the cut-out-and-get-out policy. This in turn led to 

 oversized plants, far too short depreciation periods, excessive capital 

 costs, the cutting of unprofitable timber, lack of provision for future 

 crops, and the devastation or deterioration of a large part of the 

 privately owned commercial forest land. 



The manufacturers of wood and particularly of lumber have rested 

 content with rule-of- thumb methods based on centuries of use. The 

 inevitable result has been that new or greatly improved old materials 

 fighting for markets have, by the adoption of modern competitive 

 methods such as research, displaced wood and especially lumber in 

 large volume. 



In present-day competition no material, regardless of its intrinsic 

 merit, can expect to hold its own without scientific knowledge of its 

 properties and how to modify them to meet increasingly exacting 

 requirements. 



Reliance on rule-of-thumb practice in the utilization of forest 

 ranges has led to the serious deterioration of practically the en- 

 tire range area for forage production and of some areas for timber 

 production. 



The combination of forest devastation and deterioration through 

 unwise cutting and uncontrolled fire, excessive grazing of forest 

 ranges, and the clearing and use of submarginal lands for agriculture, 

 singly or in combination, has created critical watershed conditions 

 in nearly every part of the United States. In all of this the lack of 

 knowledge of the inevitable outcome has unquestionably been one 

 factor. 



On both public and private lands efforts to grow timber have 

 started without traditional knowledge such as had been slowly 

 built up by large-scale trial and error in agriculture. European 

 forestry was remote and utilized different species under radically 

 different climatic, economic, and social conditions. Lack of knowl- 

 edge inevitably led to mistakes, which because of the time required 

 to grow timber crops have been very costly. 



