A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 659 



The principle of unity of all phases of forestry and hence of forest 

 research is being recognized in two ways in the regional forest experi- 

 ment station plan. The first is, so far as a rather complicated forest 

 distribution permits, to draw the boundaries of each territory to 

 include similar forest conditions. The second is to concentrate all 

 kinds of research in each region at one station. As a result of the 

 latter the work of the stations includes silvicultural or forest-manage- 

 ment investigations, range investigations, studies of erosion, streamflow 

 problems of both forest and range lands, studies dealing with forest 

 economics, and in a few instances investigations dealing with purely 

 regional forest-products problems. Recognition of the principle of 

 unity means the best opportunity for the coordination of interrelated 

 classes of research and the prevention of duplication. It means 

 many-sided, well-rounded-out group attacks. 



For reasons which are so obvious as hardly to require explanation, 

 the regional stations also constitute the most effective units for the 

 recognition of the third principle of Federal responsibility for regional 

 and national problems. For the classes of work handled by the 

 stations they are finally the most logical units to insure effective 

 administration at the lowest feasible cost by avoiding both excessive 

 size and excessive numbers. 



Since the creation of the Branch of Research in 1915, six such 

 regional stations have been established in the East, and five local 

 stations in the West have been reorganized on a regional basis. Plans 

 call for one or two additional stations in the United States proper and 

 one each in Alaska, Hawaii, and the West Indies. 



The second class of field unit includes only one institution, the 

 Forest Products Laboratory, at Madison, Wis. The principle of 

 unity is recognized by the concentration at the laboratory of a very 

 large percentage of the entire Forest Service effort in products research, 

 thus insuring correlation and effective group attacks. It is recog- 

 nized further by a gradually increasing amount of work on borderline 

 problems between products and silvics. The future promises to 

 bring also a growing number of purely silvicultural problems which 

 can be handled most effectively at a central laboratory such as can 

 easily be developed and has long been planned at Madison as a part 

 of the Forest Products Laboratory. It is apparent also that the 

 economic problems closely related to the forest products field can be 

 handled most satisfactorily from the laboratory. 



Distance in most forest products investigations is of far less impor- 

 tance than in silvicultural and range investigations, because most 

 forest products problems, such as timber testing and pulp and paper 

 investigations, are of a character in which the investigative material 

 can be brought to a single central laboratory without disadvantage 

 and with material gain in efficiency and correlation. Concentration 

 of the work at a single national unit tends to emphasize the principle 

 of Federal responsibility for national and regional problems and to 

 prevent work on purely local problems. The principJe of the most 

 effective administration at the lowest possible cost is also met most 

 fully in forest products investigations by a single national unit. 



The establishment of a single National Forest Products Laboratory 

 in 1910 followed the trial over a period of years of regional or local 

 laboratories, of which there were about 12, the first dating from 1891. 

 Although such local laboratories have obvious advantages, such as 



