FORESTRY AND PERMANENT PROSPERITY 17 



number of people who visited or passed through them was 3,000,000. 

 In 1938 more than 30,000,000 visits were made to the national forests 

 by people seeking recreation. Many of these people made little or no 

 stop, many came back again and again. Excluding sightseers and 

 those simply passing through, however, approximately 14,500,000 

 of these visits were made by people who came to the national forests 

 because the} T enjoyed just the kind of recreation available there. They 

 occupied summer homes, hotels, dude ranches, or resorts; they hunted, 

 fished, hiked, and rode horseback; they climbed mountains and took 

 part in winter sports. Some of them stayed at municipally owned 

 camps or those managed by the Bo}^ Scouts or service organizations or 

 clubs; others chose their own camping spots or stopped at one of the 

 more than 3,500 campgrounds which the Forest Service has equipped 

 for their entertainment. Many visitors just lazed around, studied 

 plants, animals, geological features, or traveled roads and trails over 

 timbered slopes to snowclad peaks, rushing streams, or quiet mountain 

 lakes. Altogether, millions of different people benefited from national- 

 forest recreation, and millions just traveling for pleasure enjoyed the 

 cool freshness of mountain air and the beauty of the scenery. 



As a type, national-forest recreation is simple, democratic. Public 

 camp and picnic grounds — and most resorts and other facilities — are 

 on an unostentatious, inexpensive level. Annual rentals for individual 

 summer-home sites (for which permits are issued) are low and the 

 number, size, and location of summer homes are restricted. Happi- 

 ness for the many takes precedence, always, over consideration for the 

 few. Incidental uses — -by people who "drop in" to picnic, camp for 

 a night or two, fish, hike, or hunt with camera or gun — are encouraged. 

 Policing is kept to that minimum necessary to assure safety to public 

 health and public property. 



MULTIPLE-PURPOSE MANAGEMENT 



Planning is necessary if every national-forest resource — recreation 

 as well as wood, water, forage, and wildlife — is to be perpetuated 

 through such use as will assure the greatest good to the greatest 

 number of people in the long run. All resource plans must be inte- 

 grated and correlated one with another; management over broad 

 areas must be on a system under which the land as a whole can 

 support its fair share of the country's population. This mean 

 multiple-purpose management. For living within and adjacent to 

 existing national forests — and dependent for all or a material part 

 of their competence upon them — are already nearly 1,000,000 people. 

 With national-forest areas now being acquired in the East, South, and 

 Lake States, this number may soon exceed 1,500,000. It is obviously 

 against the public interest to lock up, under the guise of single- 

 purpose management, the resources from which all these people make 

 their living. 



Nor is this necessary. For over broad areas, integration of uses of 

 various and varied resources has been accomplished for more than 

 30 years on national-forest lands which in the aggregate now exceed 

 the combined areas of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Iowa, and Missouri, 

 with half of Kansas thrown in. And under multiple-use management 

 on these broad areas, the million people just mentioned earn all or a 



