FIFTH NATIONAL CONSERVATION CONGRESS 353 



IS THE POIICY WELI-GROUNDED? 



PROBABLY the Forest Service itself would admit that its methods of deter- 

 mining the amount of timber to be sold, the prices to be fixed, and the 

 terms of contract, are to a certain extent makeshifts with which it 

 attempts to do the best it can in the face of bewilderingly dififerent demands. 



Instead of being free to install a firm far-seeing policy, based upon study of 

 all the considerations outlined in the preceding pages and adapted to them for the 

 best welfare of all concerned for all time, it has to meet the exigencies of political 

 strife in which conservation is made a pawn, of popular sentiment changing 

 swiftly with time and locality, and of the demands of Congress and States for 

 current revenue regardless of the future. 



Consequently it proclaims all mature timber for sale, but while meeting the 

 requirements of small purchasers for immediate use with fair simplicity, hedges 

 large and long-term sales with reserved rights to readjust them which safeguard 

 the Government but make such transactions only moderately attractive to pur- 

 chasers, and by this conservative course sells enough timber to meet one class 

 of critics fairly satisfactorily and not enough to get in serious trouble on the 

 other side. The practical results would be as good, and the position far easier to 

 sustain, were it possible to announce a sounder basis for the Government's exact 

 attitude toward the whole subject. 



National forest timber is sold only for use, not for speculation by the pur- 

 chaser, hence it must be removed within a specified period. Until recently five 

 years was the maximum limit. Since it became apparent that this prevented large 

 sales, especially where inaccessibility required railroad building by the purchaser, 

 the limit was extended recently to 20 years or more. This introduced a new per- 

 plexity — the fixing of sliding scale prices which protect the Government in case of 

 material rise in stumpage value, but are not prohibitive to the purchaser in the 

 beginning. In the absence of better means of determination, or of certainty as to 

 the Government's future attitude, the Forest Service now safeguards such long- 

 term sales by contracts permitting periodical increase of prices. The original 

 minimum price set before bidders is not based upon that of competing stumpage, 

 but upon the current average price of lumber and the estimated cost of logging 

 and manufacturing, being intended to allow the purchaser a reasonable profit. 

 At intervals a proportion of any considerable increase in average prices of lumber 

 is added. It is clear that such a transaction is different from a private timber 

 transaction in which, the price once settled, the purchaser has no limit to his 

 profit except his original judgment, his skill of operation, and the fortunes of the 

 future. It more closely resembles a contract for cutting on shares, with the 

 contractor's share definitely limited, but the Government without responsibility 

 for his receiving it. 



This system affords arr opportunity to obtain timber at a fair price and with 

 comparatively small capital which is attractive in many ways. On the other hand, 

 its element of uncertainty may easily be greater than that presented by private 

 timber if the latter can be obtained at much the same price, carrying costs con- 

 sidered, without obligation to cut in any given time or manner and with all stump- 



