740 A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



This is not to be wondered at. While exploitation of the virgin 

 timber stands of the South is now far advanced, the region did not 

 become the major lumber producing region of the country until 

 shortly before 1900. Prior to 1890 the cut was too small to make a 

 material inroad on the standing timber. The harvesting of this 

 tremendous accumulation of potential wealth has been a mam contri- 

 bution to the economic development of the South since that time. 

 As in other regions, timber exploitation had to run most of its course 

 before the public became concerned over the fact that exploitation 

 could not go on forever and that where the merchantable stand had 

 disappeared and the great mills shut down for lack of logs, the com- 

 munities built up around them would melt away. There was no 

 fire menace of the kind that existed in the Lake States, and surface 

 fires to clean off the dead grass and forest litter and keep the forest 

 open were regarded as beneficial rather than harmful. The South 

 had neither the taxable property values nor the viewpoint with 

 respect to the functions and possibilities of the State government as an 

 agency for furthering the general welfare along new lines to be readily 

 inclined to set up forestry departments. All the habits and traditions 

 of a predominantly agricultural, rural, individualistic, and in some 

 respects still almost pioneer stage of economic and political develop- 

 ment tended in the direction of a "hands-off " attitude and a lack of 

 any great concern about conserving the sources of future wealth 

 through public action. 



The offer of Federal cooperative funds to aid in fire protection has 

 proved a strong influence toward the inauguration of forestry work 

 by a majority of the Southern States since the enactment of the 

 Clarke-McNary law in 1924. The tasks requiring first attention were 

 to build up a protective organization and also a better informed public 

 sentiment on the value of the forest resource, the importance of taking 

 care of it, and the harmful consequences of fire in the woods. Thus 

 the educational it might almost be termed the missionary function 

 of the new State departments has loomed large, much as it did a 

 quarter of a century earlier in the North. It has been necessary to 

 convert the rural mind to a changed conception of what is good for 

 the forest, the forest owner, and the community. In default of 

 liberal State appropriations to maintain extensive systems of pro- 

 tection the State foresters have had to depend in major part upon 

 the willingness of private landowners to contribute funds that in turn 

 would bring Federal cooperative contributions. Thus the field, 

 organization, and objectives of the forestry work in the Southern 

 States are in many ways differentiated from those which are charac- 

 teristic of the work either in the Northeast or in the Lake States. 

 The South, however, faces the approach of a situation essentially 

 like that in the Lake States, through the abandonment of very large 

 amounts of cut-over land which the private owner does not consider 

 worth paying taxes on. 



In the West, the development of State forestry has been very greatly 

 affected by the presence of the national forests, which embrace more 

 than one half of the commercial forest land of the region (though by 

 no means a corresponding amount of the merchantable timber, since 

 the private holdings as a rule have the better and more accessible 



