Large Private Holdings in the North 



267 



her Company has done, or develops an 

 outside market, it does not enjoy the 

 full fruits of the land. Integrated use, 

 rather than single use, is essential for 

 efficient management. 



Sawmill operations in the North are 

 mostly small enterprises, often con- 

 ducted by men of limited experience 

 in the lumber business. Few large saw- 

 timber tracts now exist. Small-saw- 

 mill operators have neither the capital 

 nor stability to engage in long-time 

 forestry ventures. Furthermore, the 

 lumber market fluctuates violently in 

 price levels. Sawmill men are particu- 

 larly vulnerable to business declines 

 in periods of depression. Bulkiness and 

 weight of the product further militates 

 against building up a stable, long-term 

 enterprise in a region of small land 

 holdings and heavily exploited forests. 

 The lumber companies that I men- 

 tioned earlier that do have good for- 

 estry programs are exceptional rather 

 than characteristic of the industry in 

 general. It will be a long time before 

 lumber companies as such become an 

 important factor in forest-land man- 

 agement in the North. 



The wood-chemical companies have 

 shown a high degree of variability with 

 the changing times. I believe they can- 

 not be looked to as important timber- 

 land owners of the future. Few of 

 them have shown the foresight to man- 

 age their forest properties for inte- 

 grated yield of the forest products. 



Mining companies, utility compa- 

 nies, and water companies in the long 

 run should become stable owners and 

 operators of forest land. They are 

 obliged to own the land anyhow, they 

 enjoy an income from their mining or 

 other operations, and there is little 

 reason, economic or otherwise, for 

 them not to do a good job of forest 

 management. That many of them have 

 failed to do so in the past is attributed 

 primarily to lack of interest rather than 

 lack of financial ability. 



Individual family ownerships and 

 investment owners as a group tend to 

 relinquish their property to pulp com- 

 panies and others that have a greater 



stake in yield from forest lands. They 

 are subjected to the vicissitudes of in- 

 heritance taxes, property taxes unad- 

 justed to yield from the land, and to 

 division of equity upon the death of 

 the original owner. It seems almost 

 impossible to expect, under the exist- 

 ing laws and economic forces, that any 

 form of individual ownership can en- 

 joy stability beyond the life of the 

 owner. Without this stability it is im- 

 possible to maintain a permanently pro- 

 ductive forest property. 



Properties owned by individual for- 

 esters are new and, indeed, promising. 

 But they are subject to the weaknesses 

 of any other type of individual owner- 

 ship. They are subject to overextension 

 of credit and other financial difficulties 

 that may force liquidation, and they 

 are likely to be dismembered as a re- 

 sult of inheritance taxes or division of 

 property after the original owner dies. 



No type of private ownership in the 

 United States at present is such that 

 it guarantees permanently good forest 

 practice on the land. Pulp companies, 

 lumber companies, individual private 

 owners, mining companies, and others 

 have all started forestry programs and 

 abandoned them later because of var- 

 ious circumstances. No private for- 

 estry program in the North can be 

 considered permanent under existing 

 economic conditions. The stronger cor- 

 porations, on the whole, seem to be 

 more responsible owners and the ones 

 that are gradually getting control of 

 more and more forest lands. Present 

 economic trends point to an increasing 

 concentration of timberland owner- 

 ship in the hands of a few large com- 

 panies and public agencies. 



A CITIZEN may rightly ask how ef- 

 fectively the large private forest hold- 

 ings meet the public interest in good 

 protection of the land against fire, in- 

 sects, and disease outbreaks, protect 

 the watershed values, insure sustained 

 yield and a steady employment, open 

 lands to recreational use by the public, 

 and spread economic opportunity. 



The points are taken up one by one. 



