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INDUSTRIAL FORESTRY ASSOCIATIONS 



CHAPIN COLLINS 



Industrial forestry is relatively new 

 in the United States. The profession 

 has grown, particularly since 1930, 

 much as American citizens have grown 

 in their awareness of the practical sig- 

 nificance of forestry, of the forester's 

 relationship to national economics and 

 social welfare, of profit and loss in the 

 forest enterprise, of the change that 

 came about when forest industries, 

 which once had asked only how much 

 timber stood on an acre, began to ask 

 how much and in how long a time tim- 

 ber would grow on an acre. 



A forester, who earlier had been able 

 to make little contribution to an opera- 

 tion that was concerned almost wholly 

 with the harvest, became essential to 

 an operation that was concerned with 

 husbanding what it had and with grow- 

 ing more for future harvests. 



Then professional foresters began to 

 enter industry. By 1930, nearly 400 of 

 them were regularly employed in in- 

 dustry. By 1940, there were 1,000. In 

 1949, the number of professional for- 

 esters in private employ is estimated at 

 more than 2,500. Public employment 

 still absorbs the majority of college- 

 trained men of the woods, but today the 

 most rapidly expanding field of em- 

 ployment is in industry. 



This greater awareness of woodland 

 management, from seedling to harvest, 

 was given further impetus by the Cope- 

 land Report in 1933, and also by the 

 inclusion of forestry provisions in the 

 National Recovery Administration 

 codes established under the National 

 Industrial Recovery Act of 1933. Both 

 coincided roughly with wider recogni- 

 tion by forest industries, which planned 

 to stay in business, that forest acres 

 must be kept productive and that con- 

 scious effort and investment must be 

 made for that purpose. 



The recommendations of the Cope- 

 land Report met with a mixed recep- 

 tion, but the report did focus attention 



on the opportunities and responsibili- 

 ties of private ownership with respect 

 to forest lands. Under NRA in 1934, 

 forest industries were the first to adopt 

 a conservation code, with provisions 

 tending toward forest practices that 

 would assure continuous and adequate 

 timber crops. The committees and ac- 

 tivities of that comprehensive program 

 did not end with NRA in 1935. The 

 thinking then engendered continued to 

 influence later action, and, in many in- 

 stances, machinery then set up by in- 

 dustries continued to operate in other 

 forms. 



A DISTINCTION is to be drawn be- 

 tween an industrial forestry association 

 and the other organizations concerned 

 with forests. In such a broad and di- 

 verse field as the forests of America, it 

 is not surprising that the latter organi- 

 zations are many and various. In gen- 

 eral, their concern with forestry is 

 based on broad considerations of na- 

 tional welfare. Some restrict their ac- 

 tivities to individual States or regions. 

 Others have specific objectives, in 

 which forests play a part, such as con- 

 servation of wildlife and recreational 

 facilities. For their membership, they 

 look to public-spirited citizens in gen- 

 eral. Although many of them are 

 substantially supported by forest indus- 

 tries, they are not industrial forestry 

 groups as such. 



INDUSTRIAL GROUPS, in their for- 

 estry activities, are concerned chiefly 

 with the business of growing, protect- 

 ing, and harvesting trees. Their sup- 

 port comes from those who use wood 

 as their raw material. With other types 

 of associations interested in forests, the 

 industrial group looks to permanently 

 productive forests as its objective, but, 

 in addition, it must consider costs and 

 techniques. Although not all the forest 

 industries are represented now by such 



