THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE OF FORESTRY AND LUMBERING IN THE SOUTHERN

UNITED STATES

By BOLLING ARTHUR JOHNSON

"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good."

First Thessalonians: 5-21.

As long as grass grows green, and rivers flow, the sixteen Southern States of this Union, may account their forests and the products thereof, one of their chief natural resources.

Right there in that paragraph above are the words, which form the foundation stones, upon which will be builded, a superstructure of logic, based on all known facts, to prove that statement, so clear cut, and positive, in the end, that ANY man with an open mind who has followed through, will HIMSELF be convinced that every word of that statement is true; but to accomplish this history, the citizens of the South must do something more than sit down in a row and twiddle their thumbs, in the simple belief that FACTS may grow, out of hope ALONE!

(Thus began the interesting but long paper prepared by Mr. Bolling Arthur Johnson for presentation at this Congress. Owing to his illness the paper was mailed to the President at Little Rock and arrived too late to be included in the program. As the address is based on an article by the same author entitled "The South's Development," published in the Manufacturers Record of December 11, 1924, the paper is not printed here, the Editor quoting only the first and the last paragraphs which should be sufficient to induce the reader to go to the Lumber World Review for the up-to-the-minute news of, and opinions about, current forest problems.)

Mr. Johnson concludes his paper with the following striking

statements:

"The Southern Pine Association, considered to be the largest commercial association in the United States, in any line of business, when looked at from the standpoint of its activities and amount of money spent in securing statistical information and trade extension-never has been satisfied with any existing

statistics in regard to the stand of southern pine timber, and has recently been-in its own way-gathering direct 'Timber Stand' information, in every southern pine bearing timberland county or parish of the southern United States, compiling these statistics by direct work of a corps of men employed for that purpose alone, the investigation in the hands of an expert statistician, who—for a similar purpose-covered the same territory four years ago.

This work is not finished and may or may not be given to the world when it IS finished, but I am privileged to quote from the "Long Leaf Letter" a monthly message sent out to the friends of the Industrial Lumber Company of Elizabeth, La., under the direction of Robert M. Hallowell, one of the best known and most successful yellow pine producers in this country-who says in his "Long Leaf Letter" for September:

"Mr. Dunham is now completing a survey for the Southern Pine Association. His report will show the annual cut of southern pine as fifteen billion feet, and the annual growth as seven billion feet. He makes the statement that the production (cut) of southern pine will never fall below seven billion feet."

When one has considered the LUMBER production of these sixteen Southern States, that-really-is only one item of the evidence of prosperity, for the entire South, in its timberland future.

There yet remains the great matter of naval stores, the traditional "tar, pitch and turpentine," staves, headings, hoops, box shooks, railway ties, telegraph poles and the like, the whole category forming such an interesting picture for the great commercial Southland, that makes it certain, that the South will not forget its duty in the present, when it comes to appreciate how surely that will assure its prosperity-in the future-in all matters of commerce, contemplated in the question of tree production-in the soil best fitted to tree production-in the known world.

Reforestation is necessary, and obligatory, and should be; and may yet be made compulsory-some think-in some of the States of the South, which have not yet seen the light-but I do not contemplate any such probability.

The South has already-in many States-the necessary machinery of forestry association, forestry operation by States, cooperation with the Forest Service of the United States and may rest assured that with even the most ordinary help which may be given, to the artificial growth of timber, in the South, that the production of lumber and all of the products we have mentioned above, in the first paragraph of this last division of this monograph-will last for many generations yet to come. And, if the statement may be any comfort to OTHER lumber and timber production sections of this country now in competition with the South, let it be known here and now, that the general prosperity of the South itself will in a few years practically consume all, of the soft lumber items, in the list we have mentioned above; but its hardwood will continue to be shipped all over the world.

PROBLEMS OF HARDWOOD TIMBER PRODUCTION By E. F. MCCARTHY

SILVICULTURIST, APPALACHIAN FOREST EXPERIMENT STATION

The chief problems in the production of hardwoods, as presented in this paper, may be summarized as follows:

1. Proper capitalization of the land which must produce the forest crops.

2. Organization of forest property for timber production as a business enterprise.

3. The establishment of an adequate growing stock.

4. Rational expenditure of improvement funds in proportion to the producing power of the land.

The details of accomplishing these major objectives involve a multitude of minor tasks which cannot be enumerated in this brief time.

Categorically stated, the underlying facts are these, to which material objection will not be raised:

The hardwood forest in this country is in the East. It is found in the woodlots of the farms, on the swamp and overflow lands of the South, and on rough land unsuited to cultivation, chiefly in the Appalachian region, the Ozarks, the Piedmont Plateau, New England, and the Lake States.

Hardwood forest has very remarkable ability to reëstablish itself after the most abusive treatment, in fact it will produce some sort of timber crop even after cutting and fire, and only repeated abuse or very heavy grazing can entirely destroy its productive power. Planting on land which already has a potential hardwood crop, is not only unnecessary but a costly and doubtful procedure.

The history of logging in hardwood forest has been a series of repeated returns to the more accessible areas for poorer and poorer grades of material. If expediency continues to dominate the policy of hardwood management this will doubtless be the story until the forest is converted into a sprout growth where timber is never allowed to get to large sizes. The timber will be harvested for such uses as can be made of it, and since the best only will show a profit, the cull material will be left in the forest. This is the present outlook. It is a story which has already been written in its best style in the sprout hardwood forest of southern New England and New York and in other of the older and accessible regions. The significant fact is that the forest has persisted because there was no other use for the land, and so it will be generally over the hardwood region, until a long term interest in future crops succeeds the present demand for immediate returns.

This same haphazard policy is not only the history of past decades but it is current practice and the reason why it is not supplanted by a wiser, more far-sighted plan may be summed up in a single statement. No one feels assured of financial profit from a long time investment in hardwood forest. This is the outstanding problem of hardwood production. We have no experience in the business because no one has ventured into it. The reasons advanced amount to a general profession of doubt and ignorance of the problems to be met. The lack of a quick turnover stops even venturesome business men before they

start.

There is one sound financial starting point-a minimum capital investment in each acre of potential forest land. The question of whether any private owner shall make a profit upon the future timber crop depends solely upon whether he capitalizes his present holdings too high. If this is accepted as a basic

principle the real impediment to the continuous production of hardwood timber is the owner who has set such a value upon his forest lands that neither he nor the prospective purchaser can afford to hold them for a succeeding crop. If he has charged a sufficient amount of the original cost of the land and timber against the timber crop already removed, he may look to the production of the new crop without too great a burden of cost against it. With a proper recognition of value of forest land by the owner and by the public for taxation purposes, every acre of forest can be made to pay a dividend when the next crop is harvested. This will be especially true if protection and administration charges are prorated in accordance with the earning power of each acre. To deny this statement is equivalent to saying that the hardwood forest is not worth protecting from fire, or that if protected from fire the financial returns will not pay even this small charge.

Let me repeat my belief that the economic troubles which are today preventing the proper management of these forests are purely false paper valuations set up by owners through trading in forest property and by the public in assessing that property for taxation purposes. Both these errors have their source in the same evil, the evil of speculative trading in land. The so-called free purchase and sale when carried to a sufficient extent becomes the measure of value both for the owner and assessor and very few such sales of forest land have involved the slightest attention to the true value derived by careful computation from the annual net returns such forest land can make.

There is nothing new in the creation of false values for real property because in all cases of short time ownership there is the element of speculation, and the speculative buyer will pay any price which he can exceed or, as a last resort, duplicate in a sale. This is our measure of forest land values; this has been the measure of farm land values, and periodically some farm owner is forced to restore the natural balance in red ink on his balance sheet. This is just now happening in parts of the Northeast where the post-war prices of farm land cannot be maintained on fifty cent potatoes, cabbage at five dollars a ton and other farm produce in proportion.

Forest land values cannot thus quickly reach a true balance