A POLICY OF FORESTRY FOR THE NATION 



1405 



A PROGRAM FOR PRIVATE FORESTRY 



BY H. H. CHAPMAN 

 PROFESSOR OF FORESTRY, YALE FORESTRY SCHOOL 



'TMIE agitation for securing forestry practice on private 

 -*■ lands is due ; first, to the rapid destruction of the 

 forests on lands privately owned, a nation-wide condition ; 

 second, to the growing need for forest products ; third, 

 to the inadequacy of the method of public ownership of 

 forest lands to solve the problem on a quantitative basis, 

 because of the small percentage of forest lands publicly 

 owned. 



I believe absolutely that public ownership and manage- 

 ment is the best method of growing timber, and this is 

 generally admitted by foresters and economists. But 

 owing solely to the expense and slowness of the process 

 of acquiring title to lands now owned privately, foresters 

 are seeking means to check the destruction of forest 

 values on private lands and preserve their productiveness. 



Private owners have a keen appreciation of forest 

 values of all kinds, including stumpage value of merchant- 

 able timber, protective value of forested slopes, aesthetic 

 value of parks, and even commercial value of half grown 

 timber. But their general desire is to realize or cash 

 in on these values by sale of property or timber, or by 

 turning the forest products into cash. In the process, the 

 forest as a productive "plant" or property is wrecked or 

 gutted as effectually as the Huns stripped the factories 

 at Lille — and it takes just about as much patient invest- 

 ment and far more time to restore such forest property 

 to productiveness. 



Lumbermen, especially sawmill men, representing as 

 they do the business of converting forests into cash, con- 

 duct their business logically on this basis and as a class 

 are not interested in what becomes of the land as forest 

 land after cutting. Most of them will admit this and 

 justify it. Many are interested in forestry, provided they 

 themselves do not have to practice it. Most of them 

 resent, and desire to avoid, criticism for this policy, but 

 since it is the logical economic plan for them to pursue as 

 far as they have been able to figure it out, they go ahead 

 on those lines, cutting out their stumpage, and abandoning 

 the worn out mill and plant on completion of the cut. 



For this policy the lumberman need not be considered 

 either crazy, stupid, or criminal. He is a good average, 

 short-sighted American, differing in no way from other 

 operators who desire to skim the cream of a project, and 

 with far more logic behind him. It pays the farmer who 

 owns his soil to maintain its fertility, but the renter often 

 resorts to skimming. It pays any business to adopt meth- 

 ods for securing permanence, with reduced depreciation 

 and labor costs and greater efficiency — but the lumberman 

 has not been able to compute the profit in maintaining 

 and renewing his raw material by the slow growth of the 

 forest species, which does not keep pace with his mill 

 rapacity, based as it is on large output and low manu- 

 facturing costs. 



Self interest and public interest do not always coin- 

 cide, but they are seldom diametrically opposed. The 

 public benefit requires the curbing of selfish activities, 

 and this usually results in the curtailment of immediate 

 financial profit whose acquisition would result directly in 

 public loss perhaps of a permanent character. By this 

 curbing of greed, a business may even be made unprofit- 

 able. This usually indicates that the public benefits of 

 this business do not offset the injuries and damage re- 

 sulting from its conduct. 



If a business is necessary to public welfare, which is 

 the only excuse for its existence, public regulation will 

 soon cause an adjustment which makes it possible to 

 continue as before, and usually at an equal profit. 



The short-sighted policy of utter destruction of pri- 

 vate forest property, like the placer gold mining of the 

 west, may have to be terminated in the public interest, for 

 several reasons. We will continue to need forest prod- 

 ucts, grown on these lands, after the present supply is 

 exhausted, if we are to continue to enjoy our present 

 standard of living and not retrograde like the Chinese. 

 Waste land incapable of agricultural use is an economic 

 plague spot in a community, which can be cured by re- 

 storing forest values. Productive land, whether forest or 

 agricultural means taxes, roads, schools, population, 

 markets, prosperity and character. The reverse means 

 poverty, lack of transportation, ignorance, degeneracy, in- 

 sanity, and pauperism. If the reader does not believe 

 this it is because he has never investigated conditions 

 where such causes have operated for two generations. 

 Those who destroy forest values create prosperity during 

 their operations, but insure a permanent condition of 

 destitution to follow. 



We are passing through a transition stage in this coun- 

 try, when the process of skimming our national resources, 

 soil, forests, and minerals, is giving way to permanent 

 ownership and management. What is the lumberman 

 going to do with his skinned forest land in the future ? 

 The process of selling it off to prospective settlers as agri- 

 cultural land will be more and more curtailed by the 

 interference of the same public interests, which, slow to 

 awaken, now bid fair to adopt the principle that land 

 must be suitable for agriculture before being disposed of 

 to such investors. This is another example of interfer- 

 ence with immediate profits, because of public good ! 

 Are such land owners going to oppose the educational 

 efforts of the government, and the attempts of states to 

 secure land classification for fear it might prevent them 

 from unloading worthless lands on prospective farmers? 

 The corollary of the operation of skinning the forest is to 

 skin the settler. Yet there is evidence that many such 

 land owners balk at this process, and sincerely desire to 

 find some true values and real uses for their cut-over 



