820 A NATIONAL PLAN FOB AMERICAN FORESTRY 



and forest-land owners would all participate and towards the cost of 

 which all three of the parties in interest should contribute. In the 

 hearings on the bill prominence was given the idea that a reasonable 

 and fair apportionment of the cost would be obtained if the Federal 

 Government and the States should each pay one fourth of it and 

 the private owners one half. As a measure of the extent of the 

 Federal responsibility, this 1-1-2 ratio has ever since the passage of 

 the law been widely accepted. Table 7 shows that Federal expen- 

 ditures in 1932 made up 26.47 percent of the total. 



The Clarke-McNary law, however, did not place any closer limi- 

 tation upon the Federal share of the cost than the old Weeks law 

 limit of 50 percent; and it broadened the earlier law by permitting 

 county, town, and private contributions toward maintaining the 

 protective system to count as part of the expenditures which the 

 Federal Government might match. It was not the purpose of the 

 law to lay down hard-and-fast requirements for the States with 

 respect to distributing the costs. What was sought was the enlist- 

 ment of all the agencies having interest, under such a form of arrange- 

 ment as might be held by each State most feasible and appropriate 

 to its own conditions. Consequently, the legislation has afforded a 

 highly flexible basis for building up Nation-wide protection adjusted 

 to local situations and regional needs and possibilities. 



One of the objects sought in administering the Federal cooperative 

 work has been to extend as much encouragement as possible to the 

 States for its inauguration and to help get it on its feet after it has 

 been inaugurated. In some cases this leads to allotments ol Federal 

 funds substantially equal to one half the total expenditures. The 

 relatively high percentage oi the Federal contributions in the southern 

 and central regions shown in table 7 is thus explained. 



The greatest divergence as between regions appears in the last 

 column of the table, with a spread in the private expenditures from 

 almost nothing in the Middle Atlantic region to nearly 60 percent 

 in the North Rocky Mountain region. Conversely, the State, county, 

 and town, contributions in the first-named region were 83 percent, 

 but in the second-named were only 19 percent. While some eastern 

 States require (as was previously pointed out) the payment by private 

 owners of a certain part of the protection costs, the general trend in 

 the East, except in the States embraced in the southern region, has 

 been toward recognizing protection as primarily a public obligation. 

 Nowhere has the conception of a Federal, State (or State, county, 

 and town) and private sharing in the cost on one-fourth and 

 one-half basis been accepted and applied as a working principle 

 although the Pacific Coast group of States collectively happen to 

 show a fairly near approach to this distribution. In the West the 

 inclination has been to require the private owner to bear most of 

 the cost, beyond that met through Federal participation. The State 

 contribution in several of these States is largely because of State land 

 ownership, for the protection of which the State pays on the same 

 basis as would a private owner, in proportion to the acreage owned. 

 Were a deduction made of expenditures to protect State lands, the 

 relative participation of the Nation, the States, and private owners in 

 protecting private lands would show up in somewhat different ratios 

 from those presented in table 7. 



