4 AN AUSTRALIAN STUDY OF AMERICAN FORESTRY. 
Of such is the essence of America, whose spirit is efficiency, and whose 
genius is organisation. 
Her vices may be not a few. But these are her virtues. 
All these things have been done by Efficiency Engineering, which was 
introduced to the world by: Frederick Winslow Taylor at the Midvale Steel 
Works thirty years ago, since when there has been not a single strike at 
those works. 
It has doubled and trebled production; it has solved the problem of 
uniting high wages with low costs to the consumer: it has substituted co-opera- 
tion for coercion; it is shaping the industrial destinies of America; it is 
shaping the development of American forestry. 
And thus it is that we ride in American automobiles, listen to American 
gramophones, use American sewing machines, ply American typewriters—and 
study American forestry !! 
Carter IT. 
AUSTRALIAN FORESTRY—U.S.A. A LIVING PRECEDENT. 
The law of development is evolution. The lines of national development 
are conditioned by the national temperament. The national Jaw and policy 
are the expression of the national mind. Militarism may be the accepted 
gospel in Germany, but not in the Antipodes. German, or French, or Indian 
forest policy may be good for Germany, France, or India, but not for 
Australia. 
Nor is it possible to transplant and acclimatise a full-grown tree, although 
a seed or a seedling may succeed. 
Germany, France, India, and other countries, where an intensive form of 
forestry has been practised, have established their forestry systems upon a 
local foundation. Only the principles of forestry are common to all. The 
building materials and the architecture, the foundation—and the builders— 
differ in each, 
The most elaborate silviculture is that of Germany. It is also the oldest 
—the development of four hundred years of favourable conditions, a teeming 
population, cheap labour, large manufactures, and minute utilisation, a 
dominated and docile public, and finally high prices for forest products conse- 
quent upon a high protection. 
None of those conditions exists in Australia—at present. Racially, 
socially, and politically, none of the countries which are practising intensive 
forestry resembles Australia. And the disparity in the stage of development is 
a final handicap. 
Thus, while we must remain grateful for their unfolding of the general 
principles of forest science, and for unveiling to us its possibilities in a remote 
forestry future, we cannot turn to them as a very present help in our time 
of present trouble. 
It is inevitable that Australia must develop a forestry system of its own. 
It has a forest flora peculiar to itself and silvical conditions quite unlike those 
existing in any other country. But, above all, it is a young and wilfully 
democratic country. It is wholly Anglo-Saxon in sentiment and outlook, 
untrammelled by any hampering traditions. It is still-in its pioneering days, 
carelessly culling the inexhaustible natural resources of the land. It has 
scarcely awakened yet to the seriousness of national life and the need for the 
conservation of resources and energies. 
In forestry, its immediate tasks are—the planning of an organisation, 
and the development of a system. 
