182 FOREST OUTINGS 



Compromises seem possible, without irrevocable loss. Business pro- 

 moters, rural and urban, can have their power and products out of many 

 mountain waters more quietly, without messing up what is left of our 

 forest background. But first they must slow down a little in their driving 

 stride, consult their own deepest interests and impulses, and listen to reason. 



Business is business. Agreed. But ugliness is needless. It is generally 

 possible to fit dams, powerhouses, and even transmission lines into the forest 

 landscape without a widespread effect of disharmony, if care is taken in the 

 landscaping; and if tree and shrub planting to screen and to tie structures 

 into the landscape is undertaken immediately following the construction 

 job. There is seldom need for any forest-industrial development spreading 

 its structures, its construction scars, and other evidences of its being over a 

 great acreage. Yet some industrial outfits persist in sprawling out in the 

 public woods like giants barring use of the woods to the people. And some 

 big operators persist in practices that are boorish, mean, and stupid. 



Conflicts between private business and public pleasures that are the 

 most difficult to adjust arise, as a rule, in places where exclusive rights or 

 privileges were granted prior to the establishment of the national forests, 

 or before the present surge favored simple outdoor recreation. The standard 

 factory sign, "Keep Out Except on Business," does not appear on national 

 forest areas so preempted, but the attitude of old-time operators toward the 

 public who own these preempted parts of national forests remains, all too 

 often, precisely that; and such operators show it in their operations. 



They flood land without bothering to clear it of trees. The snags and 

 debris under such water render it useless or dangerous for boating or 

 swimming. 



They manipulate actual water — shift actual water levels so abruptly as to 

 throw out of adjustment natural communities of shore-line life, ranging from 

 algae to man. And sometimes, in headlong conflict over rights, business 

 operators have been known to exert such a drain as, in effect, to steal a lake 

 and all the fish in it. They drain that lake, and all that lives in it and by it, 

 right off our map and out of our future. 



Such rugged practices show signs of abating. Even the most intrenched 

 and resolute of old-timers are responding somewhat to a public resentment 



