138 OUR FEDERAL LANDS 



An Oregon lumberman called our forests "a 

 factory for continuous wood production." A Chi- 

 cago operator stated that more than half the lumber 

 cut in the United States comes from southern for- 

 ests sixty to seventy per cent second growth. 



"Billions of dollars/' states the United States 

 Chamber of Commerce, "will be invested in the new 

 industry the business of growing trees by private 

 enterprise." 



One feels tempted to hope. The problem, then, 

 of the future is not so much even protection and man- 

 agement as it is forest farming. It is an agricul- 

 tural business in which the Forest Service must act 

 the double part of the national forest farmer and the 

 practical instructor of the nation in farming the 

 state and private forest lands which constitute four 

 fifths of our total wooded and denuded lands. 



The function of the National Forests next in 

 importance to farming crops of trees is grazing mil- 

 lions of sheep and cattle another farm function. 

 This is not the place to discuss the complicated and 

 highly technical business of controlling the suste- 

 nance of six million sheep and goats and two million 

 cattle, horses and swine. Some idea of the detail 

 and the competitive problems involved may be gath- 

 ered from the fact that, in 1923, twenty-seven thou- 

 sand eight hundred permits were issued to grazers 

 using Forest Service lands. 



In earlier years, the ranges of the forests, like 

 those of the open public domain to-day, were unreg- 



