HO A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



and is entirely dependent on forest-products industries. The 28 fac- 

 tories employ 4,400 men and ship close to 16,000 carloads of products 

 a year. This is a city of fine homes, churches, schools, parks, play- 

 grounds, and up-to-date business establishments. Starting as a lum- 

 ber town, industries have gradually become diversified, and they now 

 include pulp and paper, naval stores, woodenware, and furniture, 

 but all of them are still based on the forest. The company control- 

 ling the principal industries has definitely embarked on a policy of 

 growing timber sufficient to keep the mills supplied, so that this 

 town, unlike so many other lumber industry towns, bids fair to be 

 permanent. 



A third example is the city of Cloquet, in Minnesota. Predomi- 

 nantly a sawmill town for almost a half century, its end appeared to 

 be approaching, owing to depletion of the tributary saw timber, when 

 it was practically annihilated by a conflagration in 1918. However, 

 unlike the cities of Au Sable and Oscoda referred to above, which were 

 similarly destroyed in 1911, Cloquet was rebuilt. Diversified wood- 

 using industries were established to utilize material that the sawmills 

 could not use, and efforts were made to perpetuate the timber sup- 

 ply. As a result, the city now has a population of approximately 

 7,000, or almost the same as before the fire. Besides sawmills, it 

 has industries which make paper, balsam wool, boxes, toothpicks, 

 refrigerators, clothespins, and various wood specialties. It has prac- 

 tically no industries except those based on the forest, and as only 

 about 20 percent of the county's area is cultivated or improved 

 pasture, Cloquet's future is inseparably linked with the future of 

 the northern Minnesota forests. 



LOCAL SUSTAINED YIELD IS ESSENTIAL FOR PERMANENT 



COMMUNITIES 



These communities, though larger than many, are typical of the 

 sort of communities that can be supported by permanently productive 

 forests. No one will question the desirability, from every point of 

 view, of a permanent existence for communities such as these. It is 

 upon the thousands of comparatively small communities scattered 

 throughout the country that the political and economic stability and 

 social well-being of America depend. Neither these communities nor 

 the larger metropolitan centers whose manufactures and commerce are 

 based upon the products and resources of a prosperous, productive 

 hinterland can continue to exist unless there is a continuous output of 

 products from the land. 



For one fourth of our land area this means a continuous output of 

 forest products. It means more than merely maintaining a forest 

 cover and insuring a crop of timber at some indefinite future date. 

 As has been well said: "From the standpoint of timber supply alone 

 it may be of little or no importance whether a continuous yield is 

 maintained within the radius of a township, a county, a State, or 

 even a major region of the whole country. With the consumer it 

 makes no difference about the radius within which the annual cut is 

 maintained. With the forest worker, however, it makes all the 

 difference in the world." 7 If our forests are to do their part in main- 

 taining permanent, prosperous communities, they must be handled in 



f Benton McKaye. Employment and natural resources. 144 p. U.S. Dept. of Labor. 1919. 



