32 BULLETIN 638, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



acre, while at the same time buying back for forest-reserve purposes 

 similar land, stripped of its timber, for $3 or $4 an acre. Michigan 

 no longer disposes of its delinquent-tax lands for $1 an acre, but holds 

 such lands, when nonagricultural in character, for forest reserves. 

 Similar action by all States would go far toward forming a substan- 

 tial nucleus around which an adequate system of State forests could 

 eventually be built up. The Federal Government should retain the 

 forest lands that it already holds and should add to these, as oppor- 

 tunity permits, both by purchase and by exchange. The objection 

 that such a policy will decrease local revenues by withdrawing lands 

 from taxation can be readily met in two ways. The State can con- 

 struct and maintain its fair share of community improvements, or 

 it can contribute to the local communities on the basis of the acreage 

 or value of such lands or the receipts from them; or both methods 

 can be used, as is now done in the case of the National Forests. 



As public ownership gradually increases and a larger and larger 

 proportion of the forest lands of the country are managed for a sus- 

 tained annual yield, this policy will undoubtedly have a marked in- 

 fluence in bringing about a more conservative and more permanent 

 handling of forest lands still held by private owners and particularly 

 by big corporations. 



COMMUNITY BENEFITS. 



The practice of forestry on the forest lands of the country will 

 obviously benefit the community in general by doing away with the 

 harmful social and economic effects of timber "mining." When 

 continuous forest production is secured on lands classified by experts 

 as primarily valuable for that purpose, lumbering will no longer 

 be a roving industry, leaving desolation and abandoned towns in its 

 wake. Instead there will be a permanent population engaged in the 

 care and utilization of the forest and its products. This forest com- 

 munity also will make profitable the cultivation of whatever farming 

 land there is in the region and so help to support a permanent agri- 

 cultural population. 



Forestry thus will tend to check the present alarming drift from 

 the country to the city, and will contribute materially toward build- 

 ing up a larger rural population. By furnishing opportunities for 

 employment where none now exist, it will do its share to assist in 

 solving the vexed problem of the unemployed. In Australia the 

 undertaking of State forestry has in fact been strongly advocated 

 as a considerable remedy for rural depopulation, unemployment, and 

 pauperism. A well-managed forest requires much labor in protect- 

 ing it from fire and other injuries, in nursery and planting work, in 

 making thinnings, in constructing roads, trails, bridges, telephones, 

 and other permanent improvements, and in cutting the timber and 

 other products and getting them to the market, to say nothing of the 



