756 



Yearbook^ of Agriculture 1949 



grows out of the wartime experience 

 which proved that our Nation's fac- 

 tories can produce more than most 

 people thought was possible. It grows 

 also out of our postwar experience 

 which has proved that an America 

 fully employed with anything near a 

 decent wage has a capacity to consume 

 the products of farm and of factory at 

 a rate much greater than most people 

 ever believed. For even with excessive 

 price inflation, cruelly cutting the value 

 of the workers' pay check and restrict- 

 ing to bare essentials the purchases of 

 millions of families, we are consuming 

 vastly more consumer goods than many 

 people thought we could. 



These experiences point sharply to 

 the fact that natural resources raw 

 materials are the number-one long- 

 range limiting factor in the ability of 

 America to raise the standard of living 

 of all its people to a decent and con- 

 tinually rising level. Our factory tech- 

 nology and the skill of our labor can 

 boost production almost unbelievably, 

 provided we can get enough raw ma- 

 terial to work with. But shortages of 

 raw materials can tragically defeat this 

 high American purpose. 



As the definitely exhaustible re- 

 sources, such as metals and petroleum, 

 become scarcer, industry obviously 

 must turn more and more to renewable 

 resources such as trees for its raw 

 materials. The broadening frontiers of 

 forest-products research are disclosing 

 more and more how that can be done. 



Thus the forest is crucially impor- 

 tant to labor, and to the American in- 

 terest as a whole. It is so important that 

 America can afford no longer to tem- 

 porize with the excessive forest-fire 

 losses, the destructive logging, the 

 wasteful wood utilization, and the ex- 

 tremely laggard reforestation of fire- 

 and-ax-idled forest acres. 



The groups in labor who have been 

 studying this problem are aware that 

 its solution is not a simple one. And 

 they want the solution to be in the pro- 

 gressive American way, rather than 

 totalitarian methods. They believe that 

 a large part of a typically American 



solution to the problem lies in provid- 

 ing technical and economic aids to the 

 millions of farmers and other owners 

 and operators of small forest tracts, 

 who control a huge proportion of the 

 Nation's forests, and account for the 

 bulk of its production of sawlogs, 

 veneer logs, pulpwood, chemical wood, 

 railway ties, mine props, poles, piling, 

 posts, fuel wood, rough lumber, and 

 other forest products. 



Practical, effective ways of providing 

 such assistance have been developed 

 and proved through many years of 

 fruitful and richly rewarding experi- 

 ence with the Nation's comprehensive 

 farm program. There has been far too 

 much delay already in putting that ex- 

 perience to work in the forests. 



Labor is interested, too, in the mul- 

 tiple-use principle of forest manage- 

 ment, whereby forests are developed 

 and managed for all the many benefits 

 which well-managed forests can yield : 

 Wildlife, recreation, watershed protec- 

 tion, livestock grazing, and minor forest 

 products as well as wood production. 

 For that is the way to make forests 

 contribute in fullest measure to the 

 abundant and secure life which is 

 labor's goal. The multiple-use principle 

 has been splendidly demonstrated and 

 applied on Government forests. It is 

 time to develop ways and means of ap- 

 plying the same principle to private 

 forest lands. 



Labor, especially the workers in 

 communities which depend directly on 

 wood industries for jobs and income, is 

 vitally interested in sustained-yield 

 forest management for community 

 stability and lasting prosperity. All of 

 us, however, have a stake in that to 

 keep woodworking communities self- 

 supporting instead of letting them be- 

 come impoverished by cut-out-and-get- 

 out logging, and then requiring heavy 

 expenditures for relief and rehabilita- 

 tion. This is one of the many reasons 

 why labor has called for national regu- 

 lation of cutting practices on private 

 land, for the extension of the national 

 forest system, and for the more inten- 

 sive management of public forests. 



