6 FOREST OUTINGS 



restful-looking piece of open country for miles around. And it is coming 

 back; that is something. People will come for picnics, or for an hour or so of 

 quiet and fresh air. Even a greening, protected strip of cut-over or burnt-out 

 land in the midst of great areas so laid desolate offers, as it heals, a spot for 

 human outings and a certain degree of rest and seclusion. But care must 

 be taken quietly to manage and distribute recreational use so that people, 

 playing and resting, do not destroy the returning cover. 



Most national forest land is now in a far more thrifty and flourishing 

 condition than are the cut-over areas lately taken over. Most of it can be 

 used and is used for a number of purposes at a time. The essence of sound 

 forest management for the long pull is not hoarding, not a grudging with- 

 holding, but wise use. Most forest or range land rightly managed can be 

 made to yield useful crops perpetually. Under such a developing system of 

 management material crops of the national forests returned $4,903,376 to 

 the Treasury of the United States in the fiscal year 1939. Of this money 

 $1,215,925 was returned, by law, to the States. 



To name all of the forest, range, and desert products which entered into 

 this reckoning would make a list that would run on for pages, even in the 

 smallest type. Lumber, of course, stood high on the list, and grass, making 

 meat through pasturage, returned hundreds of thousands of dollars in 

 grazing fees. Cord wood for fuel and pulp wood for the making of paper and 

 of fabrics, choice hardwoods to be sliced into veneers or carved into the 

 keels of yachts or modeled into airplane propellers, turpentine and naval 

 stores and valuable plastics and chemicals, Christmas trees, palms for Palm 

 Sunday, curiously shaped stones from the desert, ferns from the forest floor 

 to dress up the floral bouquets of matron, working girl, and debutante 

 these were among the items useful or ornamental taken and sold from 

 your national forests last year. 



Beyond such items are products whereon it is impossible to set an ade- 

 quate value in dollars and cents. What value could arbitrarily be assigned 

 the cold mountain water brought down from high, forested ranges to make 

 scorched valleys blossom and to make life possible in the towns and cities of 

 our arid West and Southwest? Snatched from the clouds at the crests, eased 

 down through canopies of trees and grass, this water is the very lifeblood of 



