FOREWORD 
MucH OF our rural poverty is within for- 
est regions with large areas of poor soils. 
Here, vanishing forest resources and forest 
industries leave farm people and rural com- 
munities stranded, minus the employment 
in the forest and the income from the forest 
so much needed to supplement the meager 
returns from their cultivated crops. 
Wretched living conditions mean abject 
people. With nothing to defend and mor- 
ale gone, no people could fight long 
against an invading enemy. 
Battles on the economic front never 
cease; they are more devastating during 
| war, to be sure, but relentless even during 
| peace. Soa country should never be caught 
| without a full measure of the services and 
products supplied from forest lands. 
_ If forests and their products should van- 
/ish, so would tables, floors, beds, newspa- 
| pers, books, boxes, electric lines, railroads, 
land thousands of other necessities, along 
‘with millions of homes and millions of 
| jobs. 
_ Rain would muddy the water, fill the res- 
jervoirs with debris, ruin the hydroelectric 
| plants, and bring flood damage the like of 
| which we never saw before. 
| Between rains you would wonder what 
| had become of the water supply. 
| For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, Washington, D .C. - - 
It will not 
Somehow, sometime, this 
But this can’t happen here. 
happen here. 
Nation will realize fully its dependence 
upon forests in both peace and war. It is 
already moving in the direction of forest 
conservation, dangerously slow to be sure, 
and the longer the delay the greater the 
cost. Eventually it will put its forest lands 
in order. It will make them produce 
abundantly and perpetually the necessities 
and jobs they now supply. And, too, it 
will develop from its forests new uses, new 
industries, new jobs, new services to man- 
kind. Advancement by one short year of 
such a forest economy will pay for itself 
many thousandfold. 
Coad, HOLepp 
Acting Chief, Forest Service. 
NEW FOREST FRONTIERS 
U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
FOREST SERVICE 
Miscellaneous Publication No. 414 - - - = April 1941 
a hen one oo bea ne telGa ae tray tea Palren wera me ane seins Price 30 cents 
