PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE OF FOREST ECONOMICS 



of such a project, and prove that you leniency of our courts with fire law 



could lower all taxation just as they do violators, all must be due to failure 



in Europe. Study the effect of de- those of us who are responsible fur 



forestation on stream flow, use specific American education in tliesr matt 



familiar examples, and convert the in- impress a true compare MI ot" values 



jury into dollars and cents. When you on the public mind, 

 get figures in all these calculations, turn As a nation we are engaged in for 



them into popular comparisons that are estry. Our national forests comprise 



easily grasped. nearly 200 million acres. Here i 



If you live on the Pacific Coast, for- stupendous task, involving the prou. 

 get that white pine grows rapidly in tion of existing supply, reforesting de- 

 Massachusetts and appeal to local pride nuded areas, and disposing of the prod 

 by saying that here, undoubtedly, is the net so as best to serve the people and 

 nation's woodlot, where climate and to influence conservative management 

 rapid-growing species give an advan- of private forests. To withhold fund- 

 tage over the East which it is a business necessary to do the work is letting an 

 crime to leave ungrasped. Show that immensely profitable manufacturing 

 the area denuded by fire and use will plant lie almost idle, as well as in 

 produce an equally valuable crop in, danger of destruction, to save the cost 

 say, sixty years, and that leaving thi^ of fuel and watchmen. To mismanage 

 land idle is costing our five coast for- it would be as bad or worse, for the 

 est States about thirty million dollars one-fifth of our timber supply thus 

 a year. Add to this the loss by fire under public control cannot but influ- 

 and show many millions altogether are ence profoundly the permanent wise 

 being thrown away that might be dis- management of the four-fifths under 

 tributed through every channel of in- private control upon which we are still 

 dustry. The lumber industry now more dependent. Clearly all of us 

 brings about $140,000,000 a year into lumberman and consumer alike have 

 the four northwest Pacific States, most to gain from stable conditions for 

 Show that this is more than they get the fullest use and perpetuation of all 

 from wheat, wool, fruit, dairying and our forest resources, regardless of own- 

 fisheries combined. The Pacific Coast ership ; from making all true forest land 

 had more than half the nation's timber, capable of earning such an income from 

 Show how many billion dollars this will forest production as, without being ex- 

 bring in if saved for manufacture, cessive, will insure its best management 

 Show the wreck of industries that and consequent fullest service to corn- 

 would follow its sudden destruction and munity and nation, 

 point out that partial destruction means And yet who can deny that we are 

 the same thing in proportion. without any accepted clear-cut, depend- 

 When a score of American citizens able, national policy which supports 

 are endangered by an uprising in China and finances this immense project with 

 or Mexico, no price is too great to pay competent consideration of both public 

 for their protection. When a few him- and private forests and their influence 

 Ired sailors went down in the Maine on permanent industrial development 5 

 we were aroused to the supremity of The Forest Service can neither an- 

 national effort war. Are the lives of nounce nor execute such a policy so 

 hundreds of men and women who meet long as there is every extreme of vari- 

 fearful death in forest fires through ance in the views not only of the State- 

 American carelessness any less pre- whose attitude toward their own for- 

 cious? Their sufferings any less cause ests and forest industries has a pr>- 

 for national horror? The' neglect of found influence, but also in Congres 

 our people to observe the same care where any executive policy, to be ck 

 with fire in the woods that they exer- pendable, must find sanction and 

 cise at home, the refusal of Congress port. Every Congressional 

 and legislatures to appropriate ade- the whole subject debated from 2 

 quately for fire prevention, and the viewpoints, chiefly political. 



