Labor Loofa at Threes and Conservation 



The 1946 convention of the Ameri- 

 can Federation of Labor, for example, 

 adopted a resolution, submitted by the 

 delegate from the Montana State Fed- 

 eration of Labor, that said, in part: 



We favor immediate action in the de- 

 velopment of a State and National program 

 for all forest lands that will protect the 

 forests from fire, insects, and disease dam- 

 age ; promote forestry practices that will re- 

 sult in full use of the productive capacity 

 of these lands but not overuse which would 

 bring exhaustion of usable timber at a later 

 date; promote greater utilization of the 

 wood products thereby eliminating waste 

 and conserving timber supplies now avail- 

 able; and provide for an aggressive start on 

 reforestation of lands now not producing 

 anything of commercial value. . . . 



Numerous State and local affiliates 



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of the American Federation of Labor 

 also have actively campaigned for a 

 program that would bring an end to 

 the destructive cutting of the Nation's 

 forests. 



ORGANIZED LABOR continues to have 

 great faith that the Nation's forests 

 can make a great contribution to the 

 welfare of the wage earners of this 

 country. In order to achieve this objec- 

 tive, labor will continue to fight for the 

 development of a program that will 

 manage the forest land in the real in- 

 terests of the people. 



WILLIAM GREEN is president of the 

 American Federation of Labor. 



LABOR LOOKS AT TREES AND CONSERVATION 



PHILIP MURRAY 



Never before has labor been more 

 acutely aware than it is today of how 

 its welfare is tied to the Nation's re- 

 sources of trees and forests. 



Millions of worker families find that 

 lumber for the houses they want to buy 

 or build costs three times what it did 

 before the Second World War and 

 about six times what it cost before the 

 First World War. The pinch of wood 

 scarcity is felt, too, by many labor 

 unions when they shop for newsprint 

 on which to publish union papers. 



No matter where a worker is em- 

 ployed, moreover, he sees parts of trees 

 put to many vital uses. All too fre- 

 quently in recent years, shortage of one 

 kind or another of tree products has 

 been a bottleneck or stumbling block 

 to production and to employment. 



Industrially, tree products are used 

 and needed everywhere. Wood is basic, 

 like steel. 



As a result of their heightened 

 awareness that something must be 

 wrong with the Nation's tree and forest 

 resources, numerous groups within or- 

 ganized labor have been studying the 

 economics of basic wood and of for- 



estry more intensively than ever before. 

 Those studies are making labor con- 

 scious of certain key facts about trees 

 and forests facts that demand action. 



Labor sees that the basic wood and 

 forest resource is renewable or ex- 

 haustible, depending wholly on how 

 that resource is managed. It is renew- 

 able if the forests are protected from 

 fire; if logging is done conservatively 

 in accordance with sound forestry prin- 

 ciples; if the wood is utilized efficiently; 

 and if depleted and devastated areas 

 are promptly reforested. 



But the wood resource is exhaustible 

 if forest fires are not controlled; if log- 

 ging is heedless of future tree crops; if 

 utilization is recklessly wasteful ; and if 

 depleted and devastated areas are left 

 as idle stump and brush lands or as 

 eroded deserts. Labor has found that 

 the latter conditions have prevailed 

 and still prevail on far too much of 

 the Nation's forest land. 



Today, moreover, as peacetime em- 

 ployment stands at the highest and 

 fullest of any time in our history, labor 

 is coming to see another resource fact 

 more clearly than ever before. This 



