A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 1257 



LEGAL BASIS 



The legal basis for forest land ownership is established in many 

 States and for the Federal Government. As to the latter, the basic 

 laws of 1891 and 1897 establishing the national-forest system, the 

 Weeks law of 1911, and the Clarke-McNary law ot 1924, all set up the 

 purposes of timber conservation and production, watershed protection, 

 and the protection of navigable or interstate streams, harbors, and 

 Federal power or irrigation projects as justifying Federal forests. 

 The laws establishing the national parks make forest recreation a pur- 

 pose of Federal reservations. 



In the States with acquisition programs, watershed protection, 

 timber production, forest recreation, and wild-life conservation are 

 variously recognized as justifying State ownership. 



The forest land acquisition by the Federal Government is limited 

 by the legal provision that advance legislative authorization must 

 be granted by each State before any Federal program can begin. 

 Under existing Federal law this power of a State to prevent Federal 

 acquisition, or to limit the area acquired, is not restricted. 



ECONOMIC BASIS 



In the West the national forests included originally those public 

 lands which had been unattractive to private ownership. Else- 

 where and the same is true with regard to acquisition of private 

 lands for the western national forests all forms of public acquisition 

 of forest lands are to be justified by the fact that the lands possess 

 values of public importance, protection, recreation, and wild life, 

 which can be or are depreciated or jeopardized by the practices of 

 private ownership. Also, the private owner, being almost universally 

 under compulsion to handle his property lor profit, commonly destroys 

 or reduces the timber-producing value of the lands, thereby injuring 

 the public interest in a continuous and abundant supply of forest 

 products. Other sections of this report detail the degree to which 

 unrestricted private ownership has done this. 



To protect its inherent interest in the maintenance of all values on 

 privately owned forest lands the public may do several things : 



(1) Trust to the free play of private initiative. 



(2) Subsidize or assist the owner, in the expectation that his treat- 

 ment of the forest land will improve. 



(3) Regulate the owner's use of his property, either with or without 

 the assumption of part or all of the additional management costs 

 thereby made necessary. 



(4) Undertake ownership of the land, thereby receiving the income 

 from ownership as well as incurring the expense. 



These alternatives are usually designated as policies of (1) " laissez- 

 faire ", (2) public aid, (3) public regulation, (4) public ownership. 



The traditional attitude toward forest land was that of "laissez 

 faire" the classic idea of economics that since it is to the owner's 

 advantage to keep his property productive he will automatically do 

 so. This treatment of the forest land arose naturally from the fact 

 that originally the major problem of the Nation, as the primary owner 

 of the forest lands of the country, was to get a major share of these 

 apparently inexhaustible lands into private ownership as quickly and 

 simply as possible, as the basis for settlement of new territory and for 



