SOUTHERN HORIZONS 



the spring rains. He reckons to feed 'bout twenty more 

 head of cattle this year and he shore do need the grass." 



Put thus baldly, to burn the woods for the sake of 

 the grass seems ridiculously like Charles Lamb's famous 

 Chinaman who burned the stable to get the roast pig. 

 Yet that paper mill forester is not laboring in vain. The 

 mere fact that he is on his job is significant. His em- 

 ployers plainly have a very different conception of tim- 

 berland from that held by their predecessors, the lum- 

 ber companies whose motto was "Cut out and get out." 



It is one thing to regard a pine forest as a rich 

 bonanza to be gathered as quickly and cheaply as pos- 

 sible and squandered recklessly. It is a very different 

 matter to consider it a bank account that must be built 

 up carefully with an eye to future investments. A small 

 storekeeper in Mobile underscores all that this switch 

 in viewpoint means. He is no "lumber baron." I doubt 

 if he is even a shareholder in one of the large paper 

 corporations. He is just a "little guy," a Southerner of 

 undistinguished ancestry and modest circumstances, 

 one of a great group that is almost unknown but which 

 must not be ignored, a man who has felt the stirring 

 of this new spirit. In an old seaport historically famous 

 for its exports of lumber, rosin, and turpentine, he has 

 caught the new vision of Southern resources and woven 

 it into his own dreams for the future. 



"Near a little farm upcountry that my wife inherited 

 from her aunt, I'm buying up all the old cutover timber- 



16 



