VIII LETTERS OF TRANSMITTAL 



three fourths as having a major or moderate influence. The forest 

 may also be the cheapest and best and in some instances the onlv 

 means for rebuilding impoverished soils on millions of acres against 

 possible future needs for agriculture. 



Already one of the great opportunities for recreation, the forest can, 

 by taking advantage of improving transportation facilities, be made 

 to aid materially in solving the problem of how to use the increasing 

 leisure time of all classes of people. Forest land is the natural and 

 often the only remaining habitat of many forms of wild life, and the 

 same is true of forest waters for fish. Forest ranges can support 

 millions of domestic livestock for at least a part of the year. 



The solution is the only means to stable permanent forest industries, 

 with a predepression value including forests of $10,000,000,000 and 

 gross products prior to 1929 of nearly $2,000,000,000. this is also 

 true of industries using other forest resources than timber and of a 

 large group of other industries dependent on both. 



The solution will provide an important source of employment for 

 labor at a time when the development of labor-saving machinery 

 makes employment a critical national problem. Our forest land in 

 productive condition and the dependent primary forest industries 

 alone would furnish employment for 2 million men. 



The solution offers an important aid in public finance by increasing 

 the amount of taxable property. A $100,000,000 investment in pulp 

 and paper plants in Wisconsin could be permanently supplied by 

 2 million acres of productive forest. 



It offers one important means for maintaining a balanced rural 

 economic and social structure in the parts of the country which will 

 grow timber, by utilizing all of the land productively for the purposes 

 for which it is best suited, maintaining industries in perpetuity, and 

 holding a reasonable part of the population in the country in a 

 healthy, diversified rural life. 



Such considerations as these make the forest problem one of the 

 largest which the American people have ever faced, and one of the 

 most urgent now demanding attention. 



A satisfactory solution of the forest problem will require the 

 nearest possible approach to national planning. The laissez-faire 

 and avowedly planless policy of private ownership is failing to meet 

 the sitution. The long-time character of forestry itself, the magni- 

 tude and cost of the undertaking, and the impossibility of doing 

 immediately everything which must be done emphasizes the desira- 

 bility of national planning. 



Programs for the various activities which make up forestry, such 

 as protection against fire, insects, and disease; extensive and intensive 

 forest practice; provision for watershed protection, recreation, forest 

 wild life, and for the management and utilization of forest ranges 

 have been worked out in as much detail as present information permits 

 and incorporated in the national plan which forms an important part 

 of the report on the Senate resolution. The Department endorses 

 the recommendations for these programs. 



The most important recommendations growing out of the inquiry, 

 for a large increase in public ownership and for the intensification of 

 management of publicly owned lands, are based largely on three 

 considerations : 



1. The extent to which the major problems of today center ^ in 

 private ownership, and the extent to which private effort on which 



