CHAPTER XVII 



Reforestation to Pay Dividends 



The new attitude of the lumber industry; the ex- 

 perience of one of the largest lumber companies in 

 the United States which is basing its future policy 

 upon reforesting its own land. 



It is evident that if our forests are allowed to 

 disappear, all kinds of industries from paper manu- 

 facturing to shoe making will fail, and even the 

 production of food will be difficult. Yet it is the 

 lumberman himself who will suffer first. What is 

 he doing about it? As in nearly every other indus- 

 try, much of the lumber business has been handed 

 down from father to son for generations. On the 

 Pacific Coast today you meet the sons and grand- 

 sons of the men who built the first sawmills in 

 Massachusetts. When the forests were cut in New 

 York, in Pennsylvania and in Michigan, these men 

 left their shanties and their dismantled mills and 

 bought new timber further west. Now they can go 

 no further. It is difficult to convince a man who 

 stands in the middle of a virgin forest which will 

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