STORY OF OUR NATIONAL FOREST 135 



Study of the accounts shows that, were they 

 computed after the fashion of business for profit, 

 other large items than road building would be 

 charged to capital account. Much equipment, sur- 

 veys, maps, lands acquired under the Weeks Act, 

 nursery and research plants and buildings of a per- 

 manent character, if charged off as in business, 

 would reduce materially the net annual cost fairly 

 chargeable against service inestimably valuable to the 

 present and future prosperity of the nation. 



The fundamental forest problem involves for- 

 ests of all ownerships in a common purpose, namely, 

 to make ends meet and keep them joined. The ends 

 are forest supply and lumber demand. Although it 

 is admitted that, fire included, we are still destroying 

 times over what we are growing, nevertheless long- 

 headed thinkers who are also hard-headed are be- 

 ginning to see a balance barely possible. William B. 

 Greeley finds three ways of approach: by cutting 

 down consumption, by great economy of consump- 

 tion, and by increasing timber growth. There are 

 beginnings in all three. The use of substitutes has 

 already become important. With 470,000,000 acres 

 of reforestable soil, three quarters of it near the 

 heart of the great market of the future, the oppor- 

 tunity of the American people is discoverable. 



"This is the constructive way," he writes, "to 

 balance accounts with both our timber and our land. 

 It promises not only replenished lumber yards and 

 pulpwood piles, but local industries and pay-rolls and 



