686 A NATIONAL PLAN FOB AMERICAN FORESTRY 



National, State, and otherwise, and also in attacks on them. The con- 

 clusions in extensive studies of forest taxation, which preceded by 

 several years the intensive study now in process, are reflected in many 

 State laws. 



Since the major part of the development of research in the For- 

 est Service has come since the war and chiefly during 1930-32 

 much of the work has been under way too short a time to produce 

 results. For much of this uncompleted work the value of setting up 

 and working toward objectives can only be judged in the future. 



The reader is perhaps in a better position than those who have been 

 engaged in the effort, to judge whether the progress made in the 

 development of an organization and facilities for forest research has 

 been worth while. He is also perhaps in a better position to judge 

 whether the progress in research itself has been worth while, but must 

 give full recognition to the fact that what has been done constitutes 

 only the barest kind of a beginning. Finally, he is in a better posi- 

 tion to judge whether the progress in the application of results has 

 been worth while, although it must be recognized that application 

 almost inevitably lags behind the knowledge available. 



If the verdict is that worth-while progress has been made, the for- 

 mulation of objectives and efforts to reach these objectives have 

 justified themselves; and the most important of these objectives, the 

 plan of bringing together and of segregating investigative activities, 

 which was the essence of the creation of the Branch of Research, has 

 justified itself. So also have the efforts which led to the formulation 

 and passage of the McSweeney-McNary Forest Research Act, and 

 the recognition of the unity of the complex forest problem and hence 

 of the different classes of research which must be used for its solution. 

 If worth-while progress has been made, one of the chief lessons of the 

 past is, therefore, the value of objectives and of steadfast, persistent 

 efforts to reach them. 



A severe economic depression is possibly sufficient justification for 

 caution in announcing if not in making far-reaching plans for formu- 

 lating additional objectives. If the use of all of our land in the 

 United States and the development of all of our industry had been 

 plan- wise, however, we might have escaped the present depression. 

 A possible means of minimizing if not eliminating future depressions 

 may lie in the right kind of planning. The making of plans or the 

 setting up of objectives for the future is in a real sense an expression 

 of faith in the future of the United States and of preparation for it. 

 The creed of the forester and the very nature of forestry require the 

 long look ahead and in themselves justify the setting up of far-reaching 

 objectives. All of these things apply in research as much as in any 

 other phase of forestry and to research with particular force if the 

 progress of the last decade and a half and the reasons for it have 

 been correctly interpreted. 



Five years ' experience has shown some deficiencies in the Mc- 

 Sweeney- cNary Forest Research Act. Forest influences now 

 demand a recognition which probably could not have been obtained 

 when the act was passed in 1928. A bill introduced in the Seventy- 

 second Congress adds a new section which rounds out the original 

 provisions by providing more specifically for erosion-streamflow 

 investigations on forest and range and other wild lands, and puts 

 this work on its own feet as to legislative authority and financial 



