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lars. My opinion is, therefore, that when the states and private owners do 

 their part, with the latter disposing of their slash after lumbering, the 

 fair share of the Government in the co-operation would be at least one 

 million dollars. 



Before leaving the subject of co-operative fire protection as provided 

 for under the Weeks Law, I wish to say that it is my feeling that the 

 best interests of the public would be served by doing away with the limita- 

 tion in that law in regard to the watersheds of navigable streams and by 

 placing the co-operation exclusively on the basis of protecting our future 

 timber supplies. Merely because the purchase of lands is limited to such 

 watersheds is no sound reason for so limiting the co-operative fire pro- 

 tection. It places an unnecessary restriction on the expenditure of federal 

 funds on certain lands where protection is urgently needed. All forest 

 lands need protection from fire. This restriction should be removed. 



I have in this paper given the subject of fire protection more space 

 than other subjects, and I realize that it is of minor importance in parts of 

 Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois. Still, it is the largest forest problem which 

 confronts the country as a whole, and I realize how very seriously it 

 affects your wood-using industries which draw their supplies of lumber and 

 other forest products largely from other states. Moreover, fire protection 

 is the only co-operative undertaking in forestry which the Government and 

 the states have started on a substantial and permanent basis. 



Along with fire protection should go the reforestation of denuded lands. 

 Whatever areas of this character which the Government or the states do 

 not acquire, and the aggregate will be large, will, by reason of the time 

 element and present economic conditions, remain unforested for a long per- 

 iod unless the Government and the states co-operate with the private own- 

 ers. Some of the states have been doing this for a number of years. The 

 common practice is to sell the planting stock at cost. But even so, the ac- 

 complishment in the reforestation of private lands has been almost insignifi- 

 cant both because of the small appropriations made by the states for the 

 purpose and because of the cost of placing the young trees in the ground, 

 which of necessity has largely to be done by inexperienced labor. The 

 present average cost of such planting is in the neighborhood of ten dollars 

 an acre, including the price of the trees which generally amounts to less 

 than half. If we consider first only the most important stretches of de- 

 nuded lands, it is estimated that the area totals at least five million acres. 

 The cost of reforesting this would amount to approximately fifty million 

 dollars or if one hundred thousand acres could be reforested annually, 

 the yearly cost would be one million dollars. Even so small a program of 

 reforestation would require fifty years. If private owners would enter 

 into contracts with the states by which the former would pay the cost 

 of the planting operation, which would be at least one-half of the total, and 

 agree to give the plantation the necessary protection and care, I believe 

 that the Federal Government would be justified in giving the undertaking 

 the great encouragement that it would, by sharing with the states the 

 remainder on a fifty-fifty basis, or, if I may be specific, by making a yearly 

 appropriation of two hundred fifty thousand dollars. 



Some day we shall have in this country a sustained yield of timber an- 



