NATIONAL FORESTS FOR THE EASTERN HALF OF THE UNITED STATES

By SHIRLEY W. ALLEN

FORESTER, AMERICAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION

It is not with the claim that the idea of purchased National Forests is new or original that I ask your consideration of a program involving a considerable expansion in the work of acquiring National Forest lands for the country east of the Great Plains. It is with the idea that this end of forestry activity is not getting its share of public attention. Most of you are familiar with the operation of the Weeks Law which was passed in 1911 and which initiated the policy of purchasing lands for National Forests at the headwaters of navigable streams. The program conceived at that time had in mind the purchase of forested lands in the White Mountains of New England and along the Appalachian chain. So far, the work of acquisition has been confined to this section and the original plan of purchase is not yet 40 per cent complete.

Last June the passage of the Clarke-McNary Act, which has been so masterfully discussed at this gathering, enlarged the scope of the acquisition work authorized by the Weeks Law. It authorizes the purchase of lands anywhere on the watersheds of navigable streams for the strict purpose of raising timber. The actual advantage which the Clarke-McNary Law gives along this line is, so far, confined to a commitment on the location and purpose of land which may be acquired. You will remember that Section 6 which covers this matter in the ClarkeMcNary Act fails to authorize the expenditure of any money, or to state just how vigorously the people of the United States, speaking through their representatives, propose to use this new authority. How then does this feature of the Clarke-McNary Act differ from the similar ones in the Weeks Act? This question can be answered by saying that the Weeks Law was passed at a time when, under the rules of both houses of Congress, first, authority, second, a fiscal program, and third, an appropriation, might be included in a single bill. In fact the Weeks Law did lay down a fiscal program for a period of five years and actually appropriated money for that period. The appropri

ations which have been secured for National Forest purchase under the Weeks Law, since the original appropriation was exhausted have been small. They have come in spite of the absence of a commitment of Congress to any definite program of expenditure. Each year it has been necessary to plead with the appropriations committee, especially with the House, because the chairman could not be referred to such a commitment.

The people of the United States, through their representatives, have declared themselves on a policy of limited Government ownership and operation of National Forests. They have failed to say through their representatives in Congress that they mean business; that they want this important work of acquiring land pushed until it is completed.

The necessity for the people of this country to say that they mean business is all the greater in view of Section 6 in the Clarke-McNary Act which broadens the original Weeks Law.

It is with this size-up of the acquisition business that the American Forestry Association has addressed itself to a great task. This is the task of securing an expression of demand for a definite fiscal policy concerning National Forest land purchases. The Association has secured the introduction of the McNary-Woodruff Bill in the present session of Congress. This bill would authorize the appropriation of three million dollars a year for five years beginning on July 1, 1926, and five million dollars a year for five years beginning on July 1, 1931, in all a program for the expenditure of forty million dollars over a period of ten years under the provision of the Weeks Law as amended. This includes the Clarke-McNary provision. The bill was drafted after an exhaustive study of the reports of the Senate Select Committee on reforestation which a little over a year ago declared that no less than three million dollars a year should be provided annually for National Forest purchase work. The study made by this select committee is exhaustive and significant. It is the report to Congress of one of its own committees which went to work thoroughly and conscientiously to get at the truth. The bill also was inspired by careful study of the reports of the Forester and with the knowledge of the difficulty of holding together an efficient land and title examining force for the work, in the face of inadequate appropriations.

Furthermore the recommendation of the National Forest Reservation Commission, charged with the authority of making actual purchases, were consulted, and liberal use was made of economic facts of the forest history of that portion of the United States, east of the Great Plains.

It is of extreme importance that the purchase work in the White Mountains and the Appalachians be continued, so that an additional three million acres of land may be added to the National Forests in these regions. The program suggests such action. Economy in administration will result here, from the consolidation of holdings which will be made possible by the additional purchases and it is from these mountain regions that immediate financial returns are flowing into the United States Treasury. As a matter of fact the existing group of National Forests in Maine, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, the Carolinas, and Georgia have more than paid their expense of administration and protection in the fiscal year ending June 30, 1924.

The program is designed also to extend to the once famous forest region of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, resulting eventually in the control of two and a half million acres in the Lake States region.

Of equal importance is the extension for the forest land. purchases to the mountain and pine growing sections of the South, aimed at the acquiring of two and a half million acres of the land which now lies idle but which is potentially as productive as any forest land in the United States.

The industrial destiny of the South is inseparably tied up with its forests. With the possible exception of cotton, the greatest source of wealth in the South for more than a quarter of a century has been its forests. They have brought into your States 20,000 saw-mills representing an investment of more than one-half a billion dollars. They have created a business which stands first among the industries in six Southern States, second in four States and third in three. One-half million people are employed by these industries and the sale of their products has brought into the South, upwards of ten billion dollars in the last twenty years. It is a common saying that southern pine sets the price of soft wood lumber because of its

dominant competitive position. The tremendous stand of the original southern forests which included some one hundred and twenty-five million acres and contained close to six hundred and fifty billion feet have shrunk 80 per cent under the worlds demand for their products. One quarter of all the pine cut today in southern forests comes from second growth which has come back, not because of careful management, but because of the wonderful productiveness of southern forest soils. One and one-quarter million acres a year of this second growth is now being cut and the crying need is for an example of forest management which will make it possible for pine forests to reproduce themselves. Habitual woods burning, general neglect and the competition of less valuable species can quickly make cutover land in the South a liability rather than an asset. Two and a half million acres of the total thirty-five million which are idle put under Federal management and well distributed throughout the denuded portions of the South, is the part of this great program of forest acquisition which you are asked to consider.

The figures which I have read,-three million acres in the eastern mountain regions, two and a half million in the southern pine country and two and a half million in the Lake States, seem to cover a tremendous area. As a matter of fact, the total eight million acres which it is hoped to secure under the program, would not make six National Forests of the size which now exist in the west. The areas listed constitute only a small portion of the land now forested or which must eventually be dedicated to the business of growing trees. Is it not proper that the richest and most experienced agency of the western hemisphere, namely, the Federal Government of the United States, should undertake in modest measure the business of demonstrating that it is possible to practice forestry east of the Great Plains?

State and private activity in this line, it seems to me, may properly be led and supplemented by Government activity. All that can be done by the three of these agencies will not be too much. We must come to the practice of looking more toward the solution of our impending wood shortage and less to that of wringing our hands and pointing sadly at the mistakes of the

past. The United States is not the first nation which has gone through a period of forest devastation before it learned that there is a way to eat the cake and have it. I believe that a note of optimism is needed. Let it be tempered of course by studying the mistakes of the past, but let it be vibrant with courage and assurance that our forest destiny need not be shrouded in gloom if we demand that the obvious relief measures be adopted. In other words there is a way out.

Fire protection, reforestation, tax laws which will support governments and still permit the private owner to practice forestry, wise utilization, and the matters of settling the ownership of our forest lands which ought to be at work-all these necessary activities must, in a measure, go forward abreast. But one or two of them are capable of being tackled with special vigor right now, and finished, so that we may have more energy to put on the others. Nothing seems to me to be of greater immediate importance than acquiring and putting to work Federal demonstration forests throughout the eastern half of this country. Universal support of the program suggested by the American Forestry Association and embodied, as far as its financial features are concerned, in the McNary Woodruff bill, will accomplish this. Whether the measure passes the present Congress or not, and as you all know this is a short session and a badly crowded one, resolutions supporting the bill are important at this time. They will help us to martial the friends of the measure at the first opportunity for a hearing. The supreme importance of well distributed National Forests in the South, I believe, merits the endorsement of the program by this body. I urge you to add to the movement, the momentum which your thoughtfulness and enthusiasm is bound to carry. No movement can stand still. We must either go forward or go back. This is no time to retreat.