GIFFORD PINCHOT ON THE SNELL BILL 



IN appearing before the Agricultural Committee which 

 heard testimony for and against the Snell Forestry 

 bill Gifford Pinchot, forest Commissioner of Pennsylva- 

 nia, and former chief of the United States Forest Serv- 

 ice first presented resolutions of the Pennsylvania For- 

 est Commission which recorded "its emphatic opposi- 

 tion to those portions of the Snell bill which would de- 

 prive Pennsylvania through her representatives in Con- 

 gress of any voice as to the future security of the lumber 

 supply without which her people cannot prosper." 

 Outlining his views of the Snell bill Mr. Pinchot said : 

 "The situation is just this : Sections i and 2 do pro- 

 vide, as I see it, that what shall or shall not be done in the 

 matter of the timber supply of the country depends upon 

 the action of the legislatiu^es of the timber exportmg 

 States. There are at present 15 timber-exporting States. 

 Inside of 10 years, and I think a good deal less than that, 

 there will be only 5, at the outside, timber-exporting States 

 able to supply their own needs and have a little surplus 

 for export. There are 33 States that are now dependent 

 for their timber supplies on other States of the Union, 

 and these States include the great majority of the most 

 populous and most powerful States like Michigan, Illi- 

 nois, New York, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Iowa, and 

 so on. Those timber-importing States, like my own State 

 of Pennsylvania, can not do business unless they get 

 the wood from the timber-exporting States. Their ag- 

 riculture and their prosperity is absolutely dependent on 

 supplies from outside. Pennsylvania imports four-fifths 

 of its timber, and Iowa, I suppose, imports nine-tenths. 

 Now, the people who live in the 33 timber-importing 

 States, the Commonwealths that are short of timber, in- 

 clude already more than three-fourths of the people of 

 the United States, and inside of 10 years they will include 

 95 per cent of them, if the population remains about as 

 it is now. In accordance with the resolutions which I 

 submitted from the forest commission of Pennsylvania, it 

 is true, as I understand it, that if sections i and 2 of the 

 Snell bill become law, the decision as to whether or not 

 these greater States and more numerous States of the 

 Union are to have lumber at all would be left to the legis- 

 latures of the few timber-exporting States over which the 

 people of the timber-importing States have no influence 

 at all, unless they can have it through the National Gov- 

 ernment. 



"It would seem to me so evident that sections i and 2 

 of the Snell bill are hostile to the economic interests of the 

 great mass of people of the United States that I have 

 never believed there was any chance whatever for its en- 

 actment and do not believe so now. Moreover, if the 

 bill were to be enacted, then it is perfectly obvious to nie, 

 at least, that it would never be given effect for the reason 

 that what you would do then would be to put the question 

 "f the preservation of the timberlands of the country 

 in the hands of the legislatures of the States where the 

 hiniberiiuMi are most powerful, and take away from the 

 people of the States where the consumers are pow- 



erful and they are the most of us and the most im- 

 portant anything to say as to whether or not that tim- 

 ber should be preserved. My view of sections i and 2 has 

 been that they never would be enacted, in any case, and 

 in the second place they would not work if they were." 



Asked by a member of the Committee to present his 

 idea of the character of a national forest policy Mr. 

 Pinchot said : "I think there are four or five different 

 things that ought to be done. The first big thing to be 

 done is to stop the devastation of privately owned timber- 

 land which is now going on. The second big thing to be 

 done is to stop fires. But the first thing is to stop this 

 devastation. Now, that can only be done, in my judg- 

 ment, for various reasons, some of which I have given 

 you, by national enactment of such a law as will apply 

 uniformily to all the States at the same time. The best 

 way in which that can be done, as I understand it, is 

 through taxation, following the analogy of the oleomar- 

 garine bill and a number of others, and the Capper bill, 

 which I had not intended to bring before this committee 

 at all, in my judgment, meets the problem in a very sat- 

 isfactory way. 



"That bill provides that the Secretary of Agriculture 

 shall establish standards, just as sections i and 2 of the 

 Snell bill do, and that those standards having been estab- 

 lished in cooperation with the lumbermen and others jmd 

 the State forest officers in the different regions of the 

 country, the lumbermen who cut in accordance with 

 those standards shall pay 5 cents a thousand tax and the 

 lumberman who does not shall pay $5. The bill itself 

 would raise in that way money enough to be self-support- 

 ing. Its enforcement would cost the Government noth- 

 ing. It would apply uniformly to all of the States at the 

 same time and would leave the conditions of competition 

 between the lumbermen untouched. It would go into 

 effect the moment it was enacted instead of having a long 

 campaign in the State legislature after the Federal law- 

 had been passed ; and in my judgment it would be simple 

 and easy to enforce and would meet the needs of the situ- 

 tion. 



"I think there ought to be money appropriated for co- 

 operative fire protection. Then I think a similar stimula- 

 tion could be brought about, that would be very val- 

 uable, by cooi>erative planting. The results you get by 

 that sort of thing are considerably larger than the amount 

 of money that is spent. I think that more land ought 

 to be bought for National Forests, and I think that the 

 timbered public domain and the timbered Indian reserva- 

 tions ought to be classified so that those parts of them 

 which properly ought to go into National Forests can be 

 placed there. 



"It is a large statement, of course, to make, that the 

 biggest economic question before a Nation such as ours 

 is this timber question, but I think the proof is absolutely 

 clear and irrefutable. Half of the sawed lumber used 

 in the whole world is used in the United States, and there 

 is no other country that has established its agriculture 



