82 A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



The economic upheaval of the past three years has focused attention 

 upon critical and perplexing problems of a social-economic nature 

 that have arisen, or have come to a head during the postwar 

 period. Eublic opinion is more receptive than ever before to the 

 inauguration of carefully planned land utilization, both nationally 

 and regionally. 



Many of our most pressing problems are not of recent origin, but 

 rather are the result of long-continued maladjustments of a funda- 

 mental nature. The Nation has grown, and grown rapidly. Prac- 

 tically unhampered private initiative has characterized all fields of 

 endeavor. The genius of our people in developing and exploiting 

 our unparalleled natural resources has made us the wealthiest of 

 nations. But the very nature of this energetic application of effort, 

 and its cumulative wastage of resources, has led inevitably to a current 

 situation in which the serious lack of proper coordination between 

 important economic and social factors seriously threatens our future 

 prosperity. 



All major plans and efforts for restoring and maintaining a state of 

 prosperity free from periodic disruption should recognize the neces- 

 sity for an adjustment of industrial practices to the requirements of 

 social welfare and the correlation of both with the basic sources of the 

 Nation's wealth. Agriculture, lumbering, and mining have been the 

 primary industries based directly upon the products of the land, and 

 have furnished the Nation's main sources of wealth and opportunity. 

 Generally speaking, the Nation has, however, pursued a policy of 

 unlimited, undirected, and often wasteful land use. It is evident that 

 this time-honored policy has been too long continued, and that a 

 definite policy involving carefully planned land utilization is necessary. 



This report, while cotifined to the field of land use for forest pur- 

 poses, has been prepared with the conviction that full and wise use 

 of our land resource as a whole is essential to the Nation's future 

 welfare, and with the recognition that forest use affects and must 

 ultimately be harmonized with, the plans for agricultural and other 

 major uses of land. 



An ample and economically available supply of timber products 

 for the needs of our people has always been, and should remain, a 

 major purpose of forest-land use. But the problem reaches much 

 further than that. Forest use evidently offers the only practical 

 means of utilizing vast areas which by and large are adapted to no 

 other major economic use. Forestry as a means of economic land 

 use has been emphasized during the last decade by such develop- 

 ments as: 



1. The growing accumulation of cut-over forest land stripped of 

 its immediate timber value, evidently not needed for agriculture, but 

 left to a precarious future with small hope of making its due con- 

 tribution to the Nation's income. 



2. The breakdown of private ownership of both agricultural and 

 forest land. The fact that much land once cultivated is proving to 

 be submarginal for agriculture promises to make available for forestry 

 a much larger area than has previously been seriously considered or 



Elanned for. The withdrawal of private ownership is creating prob- 

 jms of involuntary public ownership and management of forest lands. 



3. The growing appreciation of the far-reaching importance of 

 forests for watershed protection, recreation, wild life, and forage; and 



