A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 693 



be to restrict the scope of governmental activities, to weaken the 

 power and authority of government, and to relieve industry of 

 public control. 



One of the results is the unsettling of old objectives and the grow- 

 ing of a defeatist attitude concerning the possibilities and even the 

 need for forestry. Another is that the attacks are beginning here and 

 there to affect the development of forestry by the Federal Govern- 

 ment, by States, and by private owners in such critical ways as 

 appropriations or financial support. 



Such situations as this call for an exceptionally broad and com- 

 prehensive handling. They call for a searching analysis of all the 

 facts that can be obtained. They call for a ^examination of the 

 public advantages of productive as contrasted with idle forest land. 

 They call for a restatement of the whole forestry problem, of the 

 program necessary for its solution, and of the Federal, State, and 

 other public and private opportunities for the solution. All of this 

 should help to clarify the atmosphere and, so far as may be neces- 

 sary, to reorient the whole forestry movement. It should furnish the 

 basis for constructive action along particularly broad and aggressive 

 lines in order to insure the profitable use of forest land. It is nothing 

 more nor less that this report on Senate Resolution 175 attempts to 

 do, and for which the resolution affords the opportunity. 



This is only one illustration of the big, far-reaching contributions 

 which are periodically needed in such an enterprise as forestry, if it 

 is to be kept an aggressively constructive and vital force in American 

 social and economic welfare, and if the Federal and State Forest 

 Services are to have the objectives which are absolutely essential to 

 keep them as fighting organizations for the public interest. Con- 

 tributions such as this must, however, be based on research tech- 

 nique, and the responsibility for them rests primarily upon forest 

 research organizations, Federal and otherwise. 



