FORESTRY AND PERMANENT PROSPERITY 17 



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 means 

 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 between 

 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 part of their subsistence by regularly harvesting resources 

 such as timber and forage, the while recreational use has increased 

 between 400 and 500 percent in less than 20 years. 



This multiple-use principle of land management requires special 

 treatment in its application to restricted areas, of course. There 

 are, for example, many spots of rare scenic beauty in the national 

 forests ; places which afford visitors all they desire in the way of beauty, 

 interest, and inspiration. These places are not as a rule susceptible of 

 being combined one with another. They are, instead, scattered but 

 integral and inseparable parts of much larger areas. 



Recreational uses of these larger areas are affected by managed 

 uses of such resources as timber, water (for municipal and other 

 purposes), forage, or minerals. But on certain smaller areas — on 

 shores of limpid, tree-fringed lakes, beside beautifully clear mountain 

 streams, in fragrant meadows from which lofty, snow-clad peaks are 

 visible — recreational values are often so outstanding that special 

 treatment — which approaches single-purpose management — is applied 

 to them. 



FOREST RESEARCH 



In all phases of forestry, research is fundamental and vital, par- 

 ticularly in these days when changes in methods of handling forest 

 lands and in manufacturing, distributing, and utilizing forest products 

 seem inevitable. The major part of the effort in this field in the 

 United States is now concentrated in the Forest Service. Provision 

 is made for basic silvicultural, range, watershed, economics, and 

 products investigations. Congress has provided for a series of 12 

 regional forest, or forest and range, experiment stations and a Forest 

 Products Laboratory. Here studies and research are conducted on 

 forest problems of the entire United States. 



The diversity of the research problems undertaken and their wide 

 direct application to everyday life may be illustrated by three examples 

 of work recently accomplished. One concerns the condition and 

 weight of cattle as affected by use of range forage ; another, inexpen- 

 sive, modern homes; the third, the forest-credit situation. 



