PRIVATE FORESTRY. 7 



The situation is much more serious in other sections of the country. 

 We are still drawing upon original timber for our chief national 

 needs. We are not providing for a proper replacement of the old 

 stock by new forest growth. Most of the private timber is cut with- 

 out any regard whatever for replacement. Destructive processes are 

 permitted that retard or actually prevent the succession of a good 

 forest growth. Region after region is exhausted of old supplies. 

 Remnants of culled forests and patches of second growth are for the 

 most part not being protected. We are failing to produce by 

 growth the materials that will be needed for local industries, needed 

 to make a large part of our land useful to the State and community, 

 needed to prevent one part of the country becoming dependent on 

 another far-distant part, with the inevitabe burden of high prices. 



Nature is so prolific that some vegetation usually follows the 

 initial stages of forest destruction. Occasionally, by a combination 

 of adventitious circumstances and in spite of current methods em- 

 ployed, reproduction follows unrestricted cutting or even a fire of 

 moderate proportions. More often the succeeding growth is inferior. 

 Repeated fires and other abuse cause further deterioration, so that 

 millions of acres of cut-over land are covered with worthless species 

 or brush or with trees that are so crooked, slow growing, or defec- 

 tive that they will never yield products of value. The fact that there 

 is some woody growth on cut-over lands gives a false impression. 

 Very commonly it is but a screen of valueless vegetation that conceals 

 the effects of forest abuse. Pennsylvania has its great forests of 

 low scrub oak that, through repeated fires, have replaced a growth 

 of valuable trees. Southern New England has thousands of acres of 

 slow-growing, crooked sprouts of hardwoods replacing pine or 

 thrifty hardwoods. Minnesota has hundreds of square miles of bird 

 cherry and fireweed in place of her former wonderful white and red 

 pine. The South has its worthless black jack oak replacing the yel- 

 low pine. The Middle West has her heavily grazed woodlots that are 

 almost bare of young growth. California has its chaparral or brush, 

 the effect of a destructive system of annual or periodic burning of 

 pine forests. 



Sometimes forests are wiped out by a great conflagration like that 

 in Minnesota last fall that killed several hundred people and de- 

 stroyed many million dollars' worth of property. Generally the 

 process is slower and less spectacular, but the consequences are just 

 as serious. Already the general effect of depleting our forest re- 

 sources is being felt by wood-using industries and the consumers of 

 lumber. Hundreds of communities are suffering because the resource 

 supporting their chief industry has been exhausted. Sawmills and 



