313 REPORT OP THE FORESTRY COMMITTEE 



of forest owners and users thus: "That in pine woods burning improves pastur- 

 age, protects turpentine orchards, and does little or no harm; and in hardwood 

 forests It improves pasturage and does little harm." 



Lumbermen: As a rule, lumbermen try to keep fires out until the timber is 

 cut, after that no further efifort is made, especially if they own only the stumpage. 

 Taking the hardwoed region as a whole, however, land-owners would prevent 

 fires if this could be done without any expense for patrol work. 



Throughout the pine region lumbermen rather favor fire because it keeps 

 the woods open and so makes logging easier. As one lumberman expresses it, 

 they "are only interested in longleaf pine, and that is resistent to fire." In the 

 loblolly pine woods, where the injury done to the young growth by fire is so much 

 more evident, some lumberrtjen favor fire prevention. As a class, however, the 

 southern pine lumbermen are indifferent to the fire problem. It is argued in sup- 

 port of this indifference that "annual grass fires are safer than accumulated for- 

 est — floor debris, which invites heavier conflagration. 



A Florida lumberman, F. E. Waymer, President of the Union Lumber Com- 

 pany at Jacksonville, states the general attitude of forest owners thus: "Some 

 think burning necessary in all timber and all agree that it is necessary in boxed 

 timber." It is a common practice in turpentine orchards to burn over the area 

 each winter as a protective measure in order to prevent devastating fires when 

 the ground is dry and the turpentine is running. Very few, however, of the tur- 

 pentine operators own the land, so they may be classed with the non-land owning 

 lumbermen and with the small farmers and tenants owning little or no land. In 

 short, the attitude depends more upon whether the person owns land or not than 

 upon any other one circumstance. This is true both in the pine and in the hard- 

 wood region, though the feeling against fires, as before stated, is decidedly less 

 in the pine region. 



Stockmen: The small farmers and renters favor burning the woods where 

 stock is allowed to run at large, and these conditions extend over nearly the whole 

 of the southern pine region and the western part of the hardwood region. Stock 

 owners burn the woods in order to make early grass more available to the cattle 

 and also to kill out the under-growth so that it will be easier to keep track of loose 

 stock. As long as there is free and unrestricted range there will be general 

 trouble from fire, and possibly no measures would do more to prevent fires than 

 the passage of general State-wide stock law bills. 



Railroads: In speaking of the general attitude, that of the railroads should 

 be mentioned. Though it would seem to be to their interest to assist in prevent- 

 ing fires, they are not only indifferent, but in some cases use all their influence 

 to prevent the enactment of fire preventive laws. Their excuse for this attitude 

 is that though they are spending a large amount of money every year in dam- 

 ages for fires set by them, still they do not know what the cost of preventive 

 measures would be and they are unwilling to undertake any unknown expense. 



