A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 739 



plishment of the forestry departments. Periodically recurring seas- 

 sons of exceptionally severe fire hazard and losses drove home the 

 necessity for protection and strengthened the public demand for it. 

 Protection was no less in the interest of the lumber industry and 

 timberland owners, so long as their manufacturing equipment and 

 stands of virgin timber remained exposed to destruction by fire, than 

 it was in the interest of future forests. 



As the Lake region has been brought face to face with the stern 

 economic realities of the outcome of timber exploitation in sections 

 where extensive agricultural development is impossible, there has 

 been a great awakening. It has been realized that private ownership 

 of heavily timbered lands induced by the profitableness of cutting the 

 timber off must be only temporary if the stripped forest land cannot 

 be put to use. High-pressure efforts to sell stump land to would-be 

 farmers have demonstrated the unfavorable economic and social 

 results of trying to build up agriculture where it cannot in the long 

 run afford the farmer and his family a livelihood. Many millions of 

 acres of cut-over land no longer worth paying taxes on are returning 

 to public ownership in the Lake region through tax forfeiture. Thus 

 a gigantic problem of land utilization is the outstanding feature of the 

 present regional situation. 



All three States are now grappling with it and have inaugurated 

 far-reaching policies of retention, acquisition, reforestation, and 

 permanent public administration of nonagricultural lands. Next to 

 the northeastern region, this is the region in which State adminis- 

 tration of forests has made greatest progress. The area embraced in 

 State forests (or in Wisconsin, for special reasons which will be 

 brought out later, partly in State and partly in county forests) in the 

 three Lake States is over 1,900,000 acres, but the development of their 

 administration is as yet, for the most part, far behind that in the 

 northeastern group of States and for much of the land is embryonic. 

 The Lake States are financially handicapped, in comparison with the 

 Northeastern States which have assumed large responsibilities of forest 

 land administration, by their much smaller tax base. For example, 

 the total assessed property values per square mile in the three Lake 

 States are only about one fourth those in New York and Pennsylvania, 

 or on the basis of forest area alone that is, if the total assessed values 

 be divided by the number of square miles of forest only about one 

 fifth. 



In the South most of the growth of State activities in forestry has 

 taken place during the last 10 years. In 1920 only Virginia, North 

 Carolina, Louisiana, and Texas had forestry departments. Ten- 

 nessee was added in 1921, and Alabama in 1923. There is now a 

 forestry department in every Southern State but one (Arkansas). 

 The main objective in all cases is the control of forest fires. There 

 has not as yet been developed in any of these States a policy looking 

 to the creation of a system of State forests, and almost no State-owned 

 lands are under forestry administration. While nearly every State 

 now has a technically trained State forester, and while the duties of 

 the position include the promotion of forestry through advice to 

 private landowners and through general informational and educational 

 activities, there is little time or money available for other purposes 

 than maintaining the protective organization and arousing public 

 sentiment against fires. 



