382 REPORT OF THE FORESTRY COMMITTEE 



follow its sudden destruction and point out that partial destruction means the 

 same thing in proportion. 



When a score of American citizens are endangered by an uprising in China 

 or Mexico, no price is too great to pay for their protection. - When a few hun- 

 dred sailors went down in the "Maine" we were aroused to the supremity of 

 national effort — war. Are the lives of hundreds of. men and women who meet 

 fearful death in forest fires through American carelessness any less precious? 

 Their sufferings any less cause for national horror? The neglect of our people 

 to observe the same care with fire in the woods that they exercise at home, the 

 refusal of Congress and legislatures to appropriate adequately for fire preven- 

 tion, and the leniency of our courts with fire law violators, all must be due to 

 failure by those of us who are responsible for American education in these 

 matters to impress a true comparison of values on the public mind. 



As a nation we are engaged in forestry. Our national forests comprise 

 nearly 300 million acres. Here is a stupendous task, involving the protection 

 of existing supply, reforesting denuded areas, and disposing of the product so 

 as best to serve the people and to influence conservative management of private 

 forests. To withhold funds necessary to do the work is letting an immensely 

 profitable manufacturing plant lie almost idle, as well as in danger of destruc- 

 tion, to save the cost of fuel and watchmen. To mismanage it would be as bad 

 or worse, for the one-fifth of our timber supply thus under public control cannot 

 but influence profoundly the permanent wise management of the four-fifths under 

 private control upon which we are still more dependent. Clearly all of us — ^lum- 

 berman and consumer alike — have most to gain from stable conditions for the 

 fullest use and perpetuation of all our forest resources, regardless of ownership; 

 from making all true forest land capable of earning such an income from forest 

 production as, without being excessive, will insure its best management and conse- 

 quent fullest service to community and nation. 



And yet who can deny that we are without any accepted clear-cut, dependable, 

 national policy which supports and finances this immense project with competent 

 consideration of both public and private forests and their influence on permanent 

 industrial development? The Forest Service can neither announce nor execute 

 such a policy 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 where any executive policy, to be de- 

 pendable, must find sanction and support. Every Congressional session sees the 

 whole subject debated from a dozen viewpoints, chiefly political, with a marked 

 lack of statesman-like treatment based on any real knowledge of forest economics. 

 Besides unwillingness to provide adequate protection for the people's property 

 we even hear advocated the turning it over to a dozen State legislatures that are 

 doing still less with their own forest responsibilities. Ignorance or a desire for 

 political effect has even urged immediate sacrificial cutting to break a mythical 

 "lumber trust" when it should be self-evident that private competition is now at 

 its keenest and that the Government supply should be husbanded against the time 

 when it may have some real effect on prices to the consumer. 



