106 A NATIONAL PLAN FOE AMERICAN FORESTRY 



could be employed. It is also estimated that about three times as 

 much work could advantageously be done in privately owned forests. 



Work of the character outlined is peculiarly suitable for times of 

 depression when consumers' buying power is insufficient to absorb 

 the products of industiy. The increase in buying power resulting 

 from such employment will not be immediately offset by the produc- 

 tion of other goods which must be sold, as would be the case with 

 artificially stimulated factory employment. Instead, the money 

 spent in forest development work will go largely for wages and con- 

 sumers' goods, and consumption of farm and factory products will be 

 stimulated. 



As noted above, a depression is apt to hit the forest industries as 

 hard as any group of industries, even when forestry is on a permanent 

 basis. Emergency employment in forest development is especially 

 well adapted to give work to persons who have temporarily lost their 

 jobs in the lumber and allied industries in the same locality. It will 

 help workers to maintain their homes and to have reasonably steady 

 occupation, and will prevent their drifting aw r ay and aggravating 

 unemployment elsewhere. This is particularly desirable in regions 

 where forestry and agriculture are closely interdependent. A com- 

 bined forest and farm economy is more nearly depression-proof than 

 an urban factory-mercantile economy, because the rural workers can 

 to a considerable extent subsist by consuming their own and each 

 other's products, even if there is no outside market for them. Unless 

 the workers in the cities can sell their products or their services, they 

 will have to be fed by the community or they will quickly starve. 



FORESTS AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT 

 BOOMS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES 



The "boom" phenomenon which follows too rapid exploitation and 

 liquidation of natural resources foUows a more or less generalized 

 pattern. A boom centering around lumbering begins with the first 

 logging operation in a virgin- timber area. Plant and equipment are 

 quickly installed far beyond the sustained yield capacity of the tribu- 

 tary forests. Other logging operations and sawmills follow the first, 

 and production gathers momentum as it goes. At the start, the new 

 demand for goods and services commonly exceeds the supply. Local 

 business which is in on the ground floor prospers and expands. The 

 vacuum is rapidly filled by influx of new enterprises. Established 

 agricultural and business enterprises adjusted to the demands prevail- 

 ing before the boom reinvest their earnings in expansion of plant 

 capacity. For a time all goes well, but sooner or later the boom 

 collapses and these fundamentally sound enterprises necessarily face 

 serious loss of capital. 



In the history of booms whether in mining, stock raising, lumber- 

 ing, or recreation few local governmental agencies have had the 

 wisdom or the restraint to hold public expenditures in check. As the 

 boom gets under way and as local agriculture and business prosper 

 and expand, increases in taxes are accepted complacently by the tax- 

 payers. Every community desires intensely to outdo some neighbor- 

 ing community in the excellence of its public buildings and its roads. 

 As the income from taxes mounts, and without calculating the cost 

 to complete, a program of public improvements is launched. Almost 



