SOUTHERN HORIZONS 



comes a public enemy of the woods. Both of these 

 tragedies are much more likely to happen if a very 

 young tree, under good pulping size, is tapped. This 

 itself is a forestry crime. 



The lumberman no longer has the opportunity to go 

 into a virgin stand of pines and cut clean as he did in 

 Louisiana and Texas. In this region where once stood 

 the finest yellow pine forests on the continent, there now 

 stretches mile after mile of terrifying object lessons: 

 millions of acres stripped so bare by ruthless cutting and 

 repeated fires that they can be brought back to forestry 

 only by expensive replanting. Throughout the Southern 

 states there are eighty million such devastated acres. 

 But that type of utter destruction is fast passing. 



It is a healthy sign that war conditions high prices 

 and scarce, highly paid labor have stirred up a conflict 

 of ideas about proper cutting. Nobody any longer 

 argues the ideal system, but farmers and county agents 

 on the one side, and on the other, wood bosses and 

 foresters, accuse each other of wasteful practices. 



Ask almost any farmer and most of the county agents, 

 and they will tell you that the paper people are no 

 longer to be trusted. The pressure to get out all the 

 pulpwood possible is so great that "they'll strip off 

 everything from three inches to a foot/' 



Repeat this accusation to a paper-mill man and he 

 will reply, "No doubt a lot of landowners feel that way 

 about us. No doubt, too, the high price of stumpage and 



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