EDITORIAL 



THE ECONOMIC NECESSITY FOR PUBLIC FOREST OWNERSHIP 



THE most striking fact brought out in the report on 

 "Some Public and Economic Aspects of the Lumber 

 Industry," just published by the Forest Service, is 

 the economic need for publicly owned forests. Nearly 

 every starting point in the consideration of this many- 

 sided question leads to the conclusion that private forest 

 ownership under the conditions existing in a large part of 

 the United States has not made good from the standpoint 

 either of the public or of the timber-using industries; 

 and that a large infusion of public forest ownership is 

 the alternative. 



There is little use in crying over spilt milk or in trying 

 to find a scapegoat to which responsibility can be fixed. 

 The situation itself was inevitable. The people of the 

 United States deliberately and in pursuit of more or less 

 clearly defined purposes gave away by far the greater 

 part of the forest resources originally held in common. 

 The method of the giving made speculation in timber- 

 lands and their subsequent high capitalization a certainty. 

 The concentration of a large share of the timberlands into 

 enormous individual holdings was also an inevitable 

 feature of the system. That timber speculation should 

 be mixed liberally with the manufacture of lumber fol- 

 lowed from the method of disposing of public lands with 

 the absolute sequence of night and day. It was unavoid- 

 able that the sawmill should often become the cat's-paw of 

 the timber buyer, to pull some speculative venture out 

 of the fire. 



All of these things arc parts of a whole. They relate 

 back to the conception of public resources and the uses 

 they should serve which dominated the country during 

 the last half of the last century. 



And like nearly all such movements, with their many 

 human and dynamic aspects, the wholesale distribution of 

 the public forest lands accomplished some good. It pro- 

 moted the settlement of the West, built up its taxable 

 values, stimulated its industrial growth. The things that 

 this method of treating public resources set out to do were 

 actually done in part. But the country must now reckon 

 with the cost. The sttidy made by the Forest Service 

 shows very plainly that private ownership assumed, in 

 the days of feverish development in the Western States, 

 a task beyond its strength; that the "overload" of timber 

 thus created has become the principal source of unstable 

 conditions in the lumber industry and the principal cause 

 of a more or less wasteful use of the country's forests. 



The bad results of a more or less temporary and specu- 

 lative kind of forest ownership are not restricted to the 

 lumber industry; nor are they restricted to the states 

 where the passage of title from public to private hands is 

 still fresh in men's minds. There can be little question 

 from this review of forest conditions throughout the 

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country that the economic value of the forests of the 

 United States to its people and industries as a whole is 

 in part being destroyed by the wasteful use of these 

 forests which the conditions created by private owner- 

 ship have forced upon the lumber industry, and by the 

 inability of the industry to replace old forests with new. 

 The report of the Forest Service goes to show that there 

 are upwards of three hundred millions of acres of cutover 

 forest lands in the United States. On the greater propor- 

 tion of this vast acreage there is little forest production or 

 a production representing but a small part of the growing 

 capacity of the land. It is a safe assumption that the 

 cost of freight on the average thousand feet of lumber used 

 in the United States is increasing from year to year. In 

 the Middle West freight charges have already exceeded 

 22^2 per cent of the cost of lumber to its consumers. This 

 is pointed out as the primary reason why the cost of 

 lumber has gone up. It is one large reason why the per 

 capita consumption of lumber in the country has fallen; 

 in other words, why the people have been forced to prac- 

 tice greater economy in the use of wood. It is becoming 

 more dear because it has to be hauled farther. 



In parts of Europe where forest production is main- 

 tained only by the practice of very intensive methods, 

 the common forms of building lumber cost no more than 

 in the older portions of the United States. This is pri- 

 marily because the lumber is grown, manufactured and 

 used at home. Transportation upon it is a negligible 

 factor. The forest history of the United States, on the 

 other hand, is a series of widening circles representing 

 local timber shortages and reflected in rising lumber prices 

 proportionate with the greater distance which the material 

 had to be transported. Where shall we stop ? As between 

 shipping ordinary building lumber from Louisiana to 

 Philadelphia or from Puget Sound to Philadelphia and 

 from Siberia to Philadelphia, the question is solely one 

 of degree. The timber famine is not a bogey of the future. 

 It is the necessity for reduced consumption, brought 

 about by higher prices, which are brought about in turn 

 by a shortage of nearby forests. 



All of these things we may say have been inevitable. 

 They have resulted from a more or less deliberate course 

 followed by the United States in its economic develop- 

 ment. The only new feature is that we are finding it a 

 little harder all the time to reckon with the piper. Are 

 we, supposed to excel as a nation in common sense and in 

 ability to grasp and apply economic facts, to continue to 

 reckon with the piper; or are we going to the bottom 

 of a national economic weakness and build up aright? 

 Can we permit continued wasteful use of the great reser- 

 voirs of virgin timber remaining in the West, because 

 private ownership has created certain conditions of 



