THE AMERICAN MENTAL ATTITUDE ON CONSER- 

 VATION AND ITS GROWTH 



BY BOLLING AKTHUR JOHNSON 



. R. S. KELLOGG, who has written much and practically, on forestry 

 matters, believes that efficiency and cooperation will be the key notes of 

 future success ; that only by efficiency in the details of production is it 

 possible to decrease cost and improve quality ; that only by frank and hearty 

 cooperation between producers is it possible to maintain the equilibrium 

 between supply and demand, to avoid the waste and destruction to which 

 unlimited competition inevitably leads; that no lumberman wastes because he 

 wants to buy; that all have wasted because there seems to be no other way 

 to do; that just as long as operations are conducted on the present plan, 

 the present waste will be inevitable, and that coordination in manufacture is 

 necessary. 



The conservation movement has gone forward like a lambent flame across 

 the ground, as Kipling describes the wizard speed of a certain polo player of 



India. 



Efficiency methods in the running of all lines of business, the feeling that 

 it is as criminally careless to waste a piece of wood as it is to toss a loaf of 

 bread into the street, will have to become a mental attitude in the United 

 States before the idealists, the so-called "Forestry Dreamers" shall have been 

 satisfied or should be satisfied. 



That very attitude, too, is beginning to show in many ways. While 

 lumbermen as a class have not indorsed the forestry movement, they are 

 not to be arraigned on the subject, for they have gone much further in the 

 direction of the adoption of proper forestry methods than has the great general 

 business public gone forward in endorsing the methods of efficiency as 

 preached by that apostle of Scientific Management, Frederick W. Taylor. 



Mr. Taylor is more generally misunderstood by the rank and file of 

 business men today than is forestry by the average lumberman. This fact 

 was well illustrated only a few days ago by the remarks of a high class, careful 

 business man who had recently attended a great banquet given by a great 

 business association which Mr. Taylor had addressed, no doubt scientifically, 

 and this man was really bored by what he had heard and by what he had 

 seen and he thought that many others were also bored by what they had heard 

 and seen. This gentleman went so far as to make fun of the great man's 

 en-leavers to illustrate his ideas by drawings and was quite insistent that 

 -Nobody could tell him about his business." Now that is the attitude of the 

 average American about anything. He has not yet become fond of being 

 taught how to manage his affairs from the printed page of books simply be- 

 cause he has not yet reached the first form in the grammar school in his 

 education as a "Citizen of the World." 



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