PINE INVENTORY 



I ever wrote." Then he smiled all over. "It's great, isn't 

 it?" he exclaimed, patting the stack of letters affection- 

 ately. "They have come from the Rio Grande Valley to 

 North Carolina, from big lumber companies and little 

 farmers and scores of them from hardware and im- 

 plement dealers. Even when you know you are break- 

 ing a big story, it is not often that you get anything 

 like that kind of immediate response. And you believe 

 me," he went on excitedly, thrusting in my hands a 

 glossy newspaper photograph, "that overgrown power 

 lawnmower with long handles and a buzz saw stuck 

 out in front is the most revolutionary machine intro- 

 duced into the South since Eli Whitney's cotton gin." 



Victor is an enthusiast, but he is shrewd and for 

 twenty years he has watched Southern agriculture with 

 the keen eye of a newshawk. Clearly he foresees what 

 an inexpensive, one-man machine to fell and trim trees 

 means to Southern farmers and to big sectors of South- 

 ern industry. He confesses ruefully that he wishes he 

 might guess what it will do to Southern wages and 

 working conditions. 



A good case can be made for the Southern pine as 

 the most important element in the revolution that is 

 stirring throughout Southern farms and factories. Cer- 

 tainly it touches many more Southerners than do gas 

 and oil. It hooks in closely to the grave cotton problem 

 in the very sections where it is most difficult to solve. 

 Wood, which is man's oldest structural material, had 



139 



