A NATIONAL FOREST POLICY WHY AND HOW 



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A resolution favoring the memorial tree plan of the 

 American Forestry Association and urging the people 

 "to plant nut-bearing trees wherever possible," has been 

 adopted by the Paper Shell Pecan Growers' Association, 

 of Illinois, J. M. Patterson, president, and Robert S. 

 Carson, secretary. 



In Fort Wayne, Indiana, a new park has been started 

 in the east end of the city to be known as Memorial Park. 

 It will be forty acres in size and will have a memorial 

 grove of four and a half acres planted with oak trees, 

 each tree in memory of a fallen soldier. 



Rotary clubs throughout the United States have been 

 leaders in many cities in adopting the memorial tree meth- 

 od of honoring their members. In Jacksonville, Florida, 

 the club has given its approval to a plan for the purchase 

 of a large city block which would be converted into a 

 memorial park with an arch in the center and with 

 groups of trees. S. H. Squire, president of the Elyria 

 (Ohio) Rotary Club, reports the planting there of thirty- 

 eight Norway maples in the grounds of the hospital in 

 honor of the men from that town who gave their lives. 

 Other civic organizations participated in the ceremony. 



Don E. Mowry, general secretary of the Madison 

 (Wisconsin) Association of Commerce, reports that the 

 Girls' Civic League of the Association has planned to 

 plant memorial trees in that city. 



There are many places and much land not suited 

 for agricultural or other purposes but which would 

 make excellent land on which to start trees. The Michi- 

 gan Agricultural College through its forestry department 



is planning more than 75,000 trees among the sand dunes 

 in some of the Western Michigan districts in an effort 

 to check the shifting of these big sand piles. It is esti- 

 mated that the trees which the town of New Bedford,- 

 Massachusetts, has set out in the past few years will be 

 worth at least $1,000,000 in twenty-five years. This 

 commercial phase of the matter is worth any town's con- 

 sideration. New Bedford claims to hold the record in 

 New England for the number of trees in proportion to 

 its street mileage. 



In France they are going to convert historic Vimy 

 Ridge which saw some of the bloodiest and fiercest 

 fighting of the war into a vast memorial park to the 

 Canadian soldiers. Pitted as it is with shell holes and 

 craters made by mines it can never be turned again into 

 agricultural land; and so the Canadian government will 

 plant on it the maples of Canada. It has been suggested 

 that in the same way the Argonne be made an American 

 park, a shrine hallowed by the blood of American soldiers. 



No meaningless memorials are those which are being 

 erected today in city, town and hamlet to the sons of 

 America who fought to preserve liberty and freedom. 

 These memorials are taking on the form of community 

 center groups of buildings, parks, playgrounds and rec- 

 reation places. Thus combining utility with beauty, they 

 will keep ever fresh the memory of the sacrifices made 

 by the nation's heroes and serve both the present and the 

 coming generations. In this united service tree planting 

 takes a prominent part. 



A NATIONAL FOREST POLICY-WHY AND HOW 



THE solution of the forest problem in the United 

 States depends largely on what is done with the 

 private forests. Even with the most liberal sort 

 of a policy looking to the protection of our public forests, 

 including the acquisition of additional areas, it is upon 

 the private forests that the future largely rests. 



This is emphasized by a few striking facts which 

 have recently been pointed out by Henry S. Graves, For- 

 ester, United States Forest Service. Colonel Graves has 

 called attention to the fact that 97 per cent of the timber 

 and other wood products used in the United States is 

 obtained from privately-owned forests and that less than 

 two per cent of the saw mills of the country are operating 

 on public forests. Private owners hold four-fifths of the 

 nation's standing; furthermore this is the best and most 

 accessible timber. Almost the entire supply of certain 

 important commercial species, such as white pine and 

 spruce, southern pine, cypress, redwood and most of the 

 hardwoods, is in the hands of private owners. 



It is certain that few people realize the seriousness of 

 the situation. There is need of an awakened public con- 

 sciousness in order that remedies may be applied before 

 it is too late for them to be of any avail. As Colonel 

 Graves points out "we have hardly begun to stem the 

 tide of forest destruction ;" and there is need not only of 

 a large program as far as the public forest lands are 



concerned but even more a radical change in regard to 

 destructive cutting on private forest lands. 



So rapidly is the available supply of timber being ex- 

 hausted in some parts of the country, the South and the 

 East particularly, that if the war had come fifteen years 

 later "we would have had very great embarrassment in 

 obtaining even the lumber needed for general construc- 

 tion," as Colonel Graves points out, "except at great 

 sacrifice of time, cost and crowding of the railroads." 

 Most of the lumber would have come from the Pacific 

 Coast. Here are a few further facts in this connection 

 which it is well to consider. Most of the original supplies 

 of yellow pine in the South will be exhausted ten years 

 from now, according to the manufacturers, and within the 

 next five to seven years more than 3,000 manufacturing 

 plants in that section will go out of existence. This means 

 a moving of the lumber production center to the Pacific 

 Coast. 



What such a shift means, with the loss of competitive 

 influence, can readily be surmised when it comes to prices 

 and its effect upon the lumber industry and related trades 

 and occupations. It is estimated that the Lake States 

 whose supplies of timber only a few decades ago seemed 

 almost inexhaustible, according to the narrow views which 

 then prevailed and which still hold in some quarters, 

 already are paying a freight bill of $6,000,000 a year to 



