1110 A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



more than $4,000,000 below the then prevailing average annual 

 expenditure for national-forest protection and management within 

 the counties covered by reports indicates that it is not an exaggerated 

 estimate. Detailed comparisons of estimated State, county, and 

 private costs as compared to actual national-forest expenditures 

 within specific counties almost uniformly demonstrated that the esti- 

 mated costs were conservative. 



Accepting the returns at their face value, the absence of national- 

 forest management during the period July 1, 1922, to June 30, 1927, 

 would have increased the average annual cost to trhe counties from an 

 estimated $5,251,964 to $8,905,499, a difference of $3,653,535. The 

 cost to the several States would have jumped from $4,635,277 to 

 $8,617,803, a difference of $3,982,526. The $581,965 expended by 

 private landowners would have been increased to $1,309,659, a 

 difference of $727,694. 



To have maintained financial parity with then existing conditions, 

 the States and counties, if they had adequately managed the areas 

 without the aid of the national forests, would have had to derive from 

 these lands incomes as much in excess of what they received under 

 the then prevailing arrangement as their additional expenditures 

 would have been in excess of their approximate actual costs, or, in 

 other words, an increase of moia than $7,600,000 over approximate 

 actual expenditures. It is quite improbable that they could have 

 done so. The national-forest resources were being utilized as fully as 

 prevailing economic and industrial conditions allowed, with due 

 regard to the permanency and sustained production of such resources. 

 Substantially greater revenues could have been obtained only through 

 substantially increased charges for resources and land uses; the bulk 

 of the burden of such increased charges would fall largely upon local 

 industries; and the ability of such industries to pay taxes upon their 

 privately owned property would be correspondingly diminished. The 

 net benefits to the county would be debatable. 



THE PROBABLE SITUATION IF THE NATIONAL FORESTS 

 HAD NOT BEEN CREATED 



Regardless of the degree to which the beneficial consequences of 

 national-forest administration may be quantitatively or otherwise 

 expressed, there may be honest and sincere doubts as to whether some 

 other form of public action would not have yielded larger or more 

 substantial results. Adequate consideration of the entire problem, 

 therefore, demands a discussion of the possibilities and probable 

 consequences of such other courses of action as were capable of public 

 adoption. As previously indicated, there were two other courses 

 available first, the continued passage to or retention in private owner- 

 ship of all lands attractive to private initiative, plus State or county 

 management of the residual lands; second, the cession of all public 

 lands to the States for permanent administration as State forests. 

 Since neither of these courses was adopted in relation to the national 

 forests the conclusions as to their probable consequences necessarily 

 must be largely circumstantial and hypothetical. But justification 

 does exist for determining the conditions which actually resulted in 

 relation to comparable types of land within the same regions and 

 subject to the same circumstances and by processes of comparison 

 and analogy applying such conditions to the national-forest lands. 



