A NATIONAL PLAN FOE AMERICAN FORESTRY 



605 



TABLE 3. National forest receipts and expenditures, 10-year period, fiscal years 



1921-30, inclusive 



1 Includes maintenance of improvements. 



2 Roads, trails, other improvements, plantations, etc. 



This difference between income and outgo for running expenses, 

 totaling approximately 21 million dollars for the 10 years, has been 

 a low price to pay toward the current benefits of the national forests 

 and the values added thereto in part by this outlay. For the period 

 1926 to 1930, inclusive, the ratio of area burned on the national for- 

 ests to the "allowable burn" 1 was 1.07, on all forest lands outside 

 the national forests 11.00; the productivity of the timber and forage 

 resources was substantially increased by cultural operations; the recre- 

 ational opportunities of the national forests were much more fully 

 explored and embraced within systematic plans for their use. Thus 

 the excess of current expense over income was no deficit; it was a 

 dividend-paying investment. 



A full commercialization of the national forests might serve the 

 public interests less well than the present policy. It must always 

 be remembered, too, that the national forests create hundreds of 

 times as much income as goes directly into the Treasury from their 

 use. One thousand board feet of stumpage may bring the Treasury 

 $3, but before it has finally gone into a house as lumber or a news- 

 paper as paper pulp it will have been the cause of 10 to 20 times 

 that much money being paid in wages, transportation, taxes, and 

 for supplies and equipment. The steer which grazes on the national 

 forests for 75 cents for the season sells for 10 or 15 times that much 

 per hundred pounds in the fall, and out of that comes wages, taxes, 

 freight, supplies, and after that the packer, the railroad again, and 

 the butcher get their returns from handling the national-forest grass- 

 fed animal. The tourist who camps on the forest, who patronizes 

 a permitted resort, who hunts and fishes, puts money into circulation 

 which multiplies many times the direct return to the Treasury or 

 the cost thereto for supervising his use of the forest. So the national 

 forests are great producers of raw material, on which rests an inverted 

 pyramid of wealth in the form of both dollars and the intangible 

 things like recreational and spiritual enjoyment, which pay for them- 

 selves fully in one form or another. 



1 Allowable burn is the average annual burned acreage which it is estimated can be tolerated without 

 defeating the full accomplishment of the resource management plans and objectives. 



