improved transportation facilities, (2) more efficient 
felling, hauling, splitting, and seasoning, (3) a 
policy of free use to settlers, (4) adaptation of these 
species to current uses, (5) development of new 
products. Greater use of these species for chemical 
wood, pulp, fuel, etc., will promote less drain on 
maple, basswood, pine, and spruce for these pur- 
poses. 
The possibilities of using some of the neglected 
forest products in local handicraft industries should 
be further explored. Producing tourist souvenirs 
from paper birch and Christmas decorations from 
“cedar” and balsam boughs, and _ boat-building 
are some that have not been fully developed in 
local industries. 
A sustained-yield management plan will require 
that the timberlands be in a single ownership or at 
least managed under a common plan. A few dis- 
tricts are dominated by one or two large owners 
and consolidation of ownership should not be 
difficult there. The majority of districts, however, 
are shared by a number of owners, large and small, 
each with a separate plan of operation. The solu- 
tion in these cases is to pool timber holdings and 
reach an agreement on how much to cut annually. 
It may be that private owners will find it difficult 
to form a timber-holding organization on their 
own initiative. Few individuals are sufficiently 
interested to take the initiative. Long-term credit 
for this type of enterprise is costly and hard to 
obtain. A few noncooperative owners could easily 
For this reason, a demand has 
been growing for public aid in promoting sustained- 
prevent SUCCESS. 
yield units, financing the holding corporation with 
long-term credit, and purchasing tracts which 
otherwise will be destructively logged. In some 
areas complete reversion to public ownership may 
be the simplest answer. 
While the ultimate solution to the unemployment 
problem in the Upper Peninsula lies in rehabili- 
tating the forests to give a basis for new forest 
industries, there is need to bridge over a transition 
period during which employment opportunities 
will be less than in the recent past. 
26 
One possible means of limiting the effect of 
industrial curtailment is to encourage the trend 
toward shorter periods of employment and _ to 
spread the available jobs more widely. Many 
of the workers in the Upper Peninsula are adapt- 
able to a mixture of occupations, combining woods 
or mill work with farming, storekeeping, mining, 
etc. Perhaps this is the most desirable economic 
pattern for the immediate future, but it will not 
carry the employment load adequately without 
’ concerted action to stimulate all the available 
opportunities for employment and to develop part- 
time farming to carry the people over periods of 
low industrial activity. 
A public-works program aimed at restoring the 
cut-over forest lands to greater productivity has 
been pointed to in a recent report of the National 
Resources Committee as a desirable means of 
reducing unemployment in the northern Lake 
States. Several thousand men could readily be 
given employment during the next 15 or 20 years, 
protecting the forests from fire, reforesting denuded 
lands, building woods roads to aid in logging in- 
ferior timber. 
Public Fustified in Acting 
Rather large public interests are at stake in the 
forests of the Upper Peninsula. The public is not 
only much concerned with the dwindling supply 
of valuable pine and hardwood timber, but even 
more so with the threatened decline in employ- 
ment and local revenue. That public interest 
may be protected in part, by prohibiting any un- 
warranted destruction of natural resources; in 
part, by cooperating with private owners in creat- 
ing conditions favorable for permanent forest 
management; and, in part, by public acquisition 
and direct management of the land. The impor- 
tant consideration is that corrective steps be 
sufficiently prompt and _ sufficiently thorough- 
going to prevent the dissipation of the resources 
upon which much of the future welfare of the dis- 
trict depends. 
