effective as a large extension of publicly owned 

 forests in the hardwood region. 



Every encouragement should be given to public 

 forest ownership by our States, in line with the ad- 

 mirable steps already taken by such states as Penn- 

 sylvania, New York and Massachusetts. The field 

 for public forest ownership is so vast that there is 

 abundant opportunity for the maximum that both 

 the States and the Federal government can do. The 

 United States contains 80 odd million acres of idle 

 forest land, whose original growth has been destroy- 

 ed by logging or fire. Many of these areas can be 

 restored to productive forests only by costly methods. 

 We still have many watersheds upon which manu- 

 facturing centers depend for sources of power, or 

 large communities for domestic water, or agricultural 

 regions for irrigation, or inland waterways for navi- 

 gability, upon which the protection of water sources 

 is still left almost wholly to chance. There is no 

 more well-tried, clear-cut responsibility which should 

 be discharged by the Federal government than the 

 extension of the National Forests. I wish today 

 that there were National Forests in the pineries of 

 every one of our Southern States. I doubt if any 

 other single thing would more rapidly crystallize and 

 carry forward the reforestation of that region, with 

 its wonderful possibilities, or more effectively en- 

 courage the development of forestry work by the 

 States themselves. I wish that we might have National 

 Forests in every distinctive forest region of the 

 country, in order that the Federal government might, 

 through the real test of local forest ownership, exert 



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