A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 1423 



Private lumbering or wood-using interests should also be expected 

 to conduct or contribute to the cost of conducting research, par- 

 ticularly in the pathology of forest products, to a greater extent than 

 at present. Organizations erected primarily for commercial profit 

 will rarely be justified in any but the most local and superficial investi- 

 gation of the diseases affecting forests; they should, however, be 

 encouraged to employ investigators or contribute funds for the enlarge- 

 ment of research by existing agencies, whenever they encounter 

 problems of economic importance in the field of wood utilization, 

 as in pulp and paper or wood preservation work on which they desire 

 particularly early or complete information. Experience has shown 

 that investigations supported by industry can rarely be expected to 

 have the continuity or disinterested quality needed for fundamental 

 research and that outside of governmental agencies only endowed 

 universities and research institutes can be expected to aid materially in 

 the more fundamental studies. There is some reason to believe that the 

 State and Federal Governments would do well to devote their investi- 

 gative energies to a greater extent than at present to the more funda- 

 mental phases and to require industry to finance to a greater extent 

 investigations of immediate economic benefit. It will be practicable 

 to apply such a policy only in cases in which the industry to be 

 benefited is already organized on a reasonably large scale. The small 

 sawmill operator, for example, like the small farmer, must continue 

 to have most of his problems solved for him. Better-organized 

 groups are ordinarily better able to utilize research results, and can 

 usually be induced to support experimental work after preliminary 

 Government investigations in their fields have educated them as to 

 the benefits that can be derived. Much of the immediately applicable 

 experimentation and nearly all of the fundamental studies on which 

 immediate economic investigations must be based will therefore have 

 to continue to be carried on by State or Federal agencies. 



ORGANIZED CONTROL 



A control or rather prevention process for which governmental 

 organization must function is quarantine against diseases from over- 

 seas. The present regulations of the Federal Bureau of Plant Quar- 

 antine, allowing the introduction of tree propagating stock, other than 

 seeds, only under supervision of the Bureau, should be continued. 

 Particularly stringent regulations, such as those now applying to elms, 

 should be made against the entry of other especially dangerous 

 species as fast as studies made by pathologists at home and abroad 

 make it possible to determine what species and kinds of material 

 are most likely to carry infection. 



The fact that most of the forest-tree diseases present on the Pacific 

 slope in this country are quite different from those occurring in the 

 East has caused some study to be given to the possible desirability 

 of restricting the interchange of forest trees between the two regions. 

 Protective measures of this kind, if adopted, could be undertaken only 

 by the Federal Government. One of the developments which brings 

 such a proposal to the fore just at this time is the accumulation of 

 evidence of the destructiveness of the western dwarf mistletoes of 

 pine which do not occur in the East. The feasibility of quarantine 

 action to prevent their introduction into the Eastern States has been 

 given some attention by a number of forest pathologists. 



