1080 A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



sum, about $2,000, with which the State was enabled to find $2,000 

 additional to start the work. 



The effect of the Federal contribution has been to reduce the price 

 of trees which the farmer has to pay. It appears to be desirable to 

 sell the trees rather than to give them away. They are more highly 

 valued and better planted when obtained only for a price. This 

 price is low. In theory it is less than cost by at least the amount of 

 the Federal appropriation, because, under the Federal regulations 

 made in the administration of the project, the State is not permitted 

 to recover through sale an amount in excess of what the State itself 

 puts into the work. In most States the recovery is much less than 

 that. 



Federal cooperation has tended to improve State practice. In lieu 

 of money it has supplied Norway pine seed when hard to get from 

 other sources. It has exerted influence upon the States to avoid use 

 of planting stock for landscape and related private uses in competition 

 with commercial nursery stock. 



Experience has proved that satisfactory production and distribu- 

 tion of suitable trees for forest planting has not been attained in the 

 absence of public assistance and guidance. The commercial produc- 

 tion of forest stock is still undeveloped in most sections of the country. 

 The State forestry departments are showing the way by producing 

 these small trees in quantity and at minimum cost. When the 

 market is sufficiently developed, it is possible that commercial nurs- 

 eries may find it profitable to engage in production of forest trees of 

 suitable species and size and at such prices as would make forest 

 planting feasible, as some of them are already doing to a small extent. 

 The interest in trees which has been stimulated by public activity in 

 forest planting has, it is confidently believed, increased the business 

 of nurserymen in other lines, such as fruit, nut, and decorative tree 

 stock. The farmer cannot afford to plant his waste lands unless the 

 planting stock can be bought at a low figure, a figure much lower 

 than that contemplated by nurserymen before the practice of raising 

 small trees for forest planting was established, by State and Federal 

 agencies. The purpose of the law is to enable him to get the kind 

 and quantity of forest trees needed for his special uses at a cost which 

 he can afford. 



It has been estimated that there will remain in the United States 

 a total of approximately 70 million acres of land now in a poor stage 

 of restocking, deforested, and submarginal argiculturally, which will 

 not become satisfactorily restocked within the next 40 years without 

 planting. How much it may be economically advisable to plant will 

 be determined on the basis of our forest needs. But, in any event, 

 this estimate makes it clear that the 1930 program of planting on 

 State and private land, as indicated by table 8, which would take 

 care of less than 100,000 acres, is quite inadequate. The present 

 effort in this line can be considered as essentially educational and 

 demonstrational, and even under that aspect it should be much 

 extended. 



