A NATIOHAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 1151 



is whether such action by public agencies would handicap private 

 enterprise or benefit it. If the preponderant facts indicate that pri- 

 vate enterprise would not be handicapped, but instead benefited, little 

 argument remains against enlarged public ownership of lands in this 

 classification. 



With limited exceptions, individual or private action is wholly con- 

 tingent upon the existence of a sufficient profit incentive. Where 

 that is absent private enterprise quickly abandons the obligations of 

 ownership. There is much forest land where the profit incentive is so 

 obviously lacking, or is of such small degree, that the probability of 

 successful private action in forest-land management may be dismissed 

 from consideration. But while the monetary returns from such lands 

 may not be sufficient to inspire continued private ownership the 

 products of such lands if publicly administered will permanently 

 contribute to the support of wood-using industries which by their 

 successful and continuous operation will provide markets for the 

 products of private forest lands and thus promote the practice of 

 forestry to a degree not otherwise practicable. It may be the best 

 economic doctrine for the public to assume the task of forest regenera- 

 tion, leaving to private initiative the more practicable functions of 

 harvesting, transporting, manufacturing, and merchandising the forest 

 products. In general, the function of redeeming denuded forest lands 

 and of carrying young stands of timber to economic maturity will be 

 assumed by private enterprise under only the most favorable cir- 

 cumstances, and its assumption by the public under any other cir- 

 cumstances helps rather than handicaps private forestry. There is 

 no significant competition between public and private enterprise in 

 this field of forestry. 



ACQUISITION OF LANDS SUPPORTING MERCHANTABLE TIMBER 



If the 552 billion board feet of saw timber on the national forests, 

 the 53 billion feet on other Federal lands, the 42 billion on State forests 

 and the 32 billion feet on the Indian reservations administered by the 

 United States on behalf of the Indians, or any substantial part thereof, 

 were now in private ownership, the conditions of the lumber industry 

 and of forestry generally would be much worse than they are. Cur- 

 rent facts make it clearly evident that the initiation of a program of 

 public retention and acquisition of forest-productive lands was highly 

 beneficial not only to the public but also the timber industry and the 

 individual owner of forest land. Instead of^ reacting adversely 

 against the best economic interests of States and industries, the policy 

 has, in large degree, safeguarded such interests. The present question 

 is not of its possible curtailment but of the necessity for its consider- 

 able enlargement. 



The forest situation in the United States presents a striking 

 economic anomaly a surplus of privately-owned timber in a country 

 which faces a possible deficiency of future timber supply. If, during 

 the past 40 years, the Federal Government had parted title with only 

 that part of its timbered lands actually needed to supply current 

 timber requirements, a major cause of the present wasteful depletion 

 of forest lands and resources would not now exist. 



But liberal public-land laws permitted private acquisition of areas 

 of heavily timbered lands vastly in excess of current and immediately 



