343 REPORT OF THE FORESTRY COMMITTEE 



penditure and make the national forests self-supporting. There are as many who 

 insist that good faith to the whole people requires holding as an investment for 

 higher prices to come. Finally, there are innumerable technical problems which 

 may or may not suggest early cutting and reproduction from a strictly silvicul- 

 tural standpoint. 



In many older countries these governmental perplexities have been greatly 

 lessened by the crystallization of a forest policy, which, because it involves the 

 welfare of the people as a whole, governs the conduct of all agencies, private 

 as well as public, and attempts to protect each with equal impartiality. It is 

 recognized that the consumer -does not care who supplies the lumber, so long 

 as it is available at a price which warrants its use, and that to insure such 

 availability requires encouraging uniformly the wisest permanent use of all land 

 chiefly valuable for forest production. To accomplish this, they seek to extend 

 protection and stable good management to private as well as public forests. 

 While insisting upon certain standards of private conduct, they are equally 

 scrupulous to maintain corresponding public reciprocity in order that such con- 

 duct may be mutually profitable. As a rule, public forests abroad are expected 

 to pay financially and lessen taxation. 



Under such a policy circumstances could hardly arise wherein the govern- 

 ment would be seriously asked to consider an absolutely independent course 

 with its own forests, especially if this course were without regard to the welfare 

 of forest industry as a whole. Certainly it would not be expected to act without 

 such knowledge of forest conditions outside governmental administration as 

 would enable fairly accurate forecast of the aggregate result of such a course. 



Here, however neither nation nor State has any clear-cut, dependable policy 

 which takes into consideration both public and private forests and their influence 

 on permanent industrial development. No department or bureau directly re- 

 sponsible for disposal of federal forest resources can announce such a policy 

 permanently, much less execute it, so long as there is every extreme of variance 

 in the views not only of the States, whose attitude toward their own forests 

 and forest industries has a profound influence, but also in Congress itself where 

 any executive policy, to be dependable, must find sanction and support. 



This situation is due chiefly to conflicts of interest that are apparent, not 

 real, and would largely disappear were forest problems approached with a 

 broader understanding of forest economics. As a matter of fact, interest should 

 be mutual in the one solution that can be permanently satisfactory to all — stable 

 conditions for the fullest use and perpetuation of all our forest resources. 



It is absurd to suppose that these conditions can be determined without 

 carefully considering the quantity, character and location of all these resources, 

 their relation to each other, and the economic factors that govern the protection, 

 harvesting, manufacture, transportation and use of all. It is also unreasonable 

 to suppose that, had we such information, we are not intelligent enough to solve 

 the fundamental problems of forest policy. That we are now bewildered on 

 so many points proves only the crying need for wider and more sincere study 

 of the factors involved, and particularly as they afifect interests other than our 



