GOVERNMENT FOREST WORK 39 
are giving more and more attention to forest man- 
agement. Unstable ownership of forest land has been 
a large obstacle to the rapid spread of timber growing; 
but there is now evidence of a trend toward greater 
stability of ownership, accompanied by a greater in- 
terest on the part of owners in timber growing as 
a form of land use. 
Over two-thirds of the original forests of the United 
States have been culled, cut over, or burned, and 
three-fifths of their merchantable timber is gone. 
About 25,000,000,000 cubic feet of wood is removed 
annually from the forests and but 6,000,000,000 cubic 
feet is grown. 
We have been using up our forests without growing 
new ones. At the bottom of the whole problem is idle 
forest land. The United States contains some 
330,000,000 acres of cut-cver or denuded forests; many 
million acres of this amount has been completely dev- 
astated by forest fires and methods of cutting which 
destroy or prevent new timber growth. We are short 
of growing forests; and the timber supply of the fu- 
ture must come from forests which are grown, as the 
supply of virgin timber can not last indefinitely. 
The situation necessitates a broad policy of for- 
estry for the whole Nation, which will include both 
an enlarged program of public acquisition of forests 
by the Federal Government, the several States, and 
municipalities, and the protection and perpetuation of 
forest growths on all privately owned lands which may 
not better be used for agriculture and settlement. For 
the latter there must be an organized system of protec- 
tion of all forest lands, including cut-over lands, against 
fire, with a division of the cost of maintaining protec- 
tion between the public and timber-land owners. 
COOPERATION WITH STATES 
CLARK-McNARY LAW 
Activities in State cooperation have been extended 
| materially through the Clarke-McNary law of June 7, 
1924, This act authorizes annual appropriations of 
