FORESTRY IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOUTH

WILLIAM L. HALL, Hall, Kellogg and Company

So rich is the subject in materials for consideration that in a few moments in a crowded program one can only hope to single out and comment briefly on a few important factors in the situation.

At the start it might be well for us to fix anew in our minds the fact already well known that the timberlands of the south are very extensive. They cover large portions of sixteen states, including on the north the States of Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri and on the west Oklahoma and Texas,-one-third of the States of our Union. According to our best estimates this great region contains some 220 million acres of forest lands-nearly one-half of the whole area of forest lands of the United States.

This great forest estate is not changing in acreage rapidly at present. In places forest lands are being cleared. In other places abandoned farms are reverting slowly to forest. Since 1900 it is probable that the southern forest has increased in acreage. There are no present indications of rapid change during the next 50 years. It is doubtful whether the area will vary by as much as 25% during that time.

So we have a vast and rather stable area of forest interspersed through a region rich in other natural sources, teeming with industries and in the surge of present development on a vast scale. Under such conditions the potentialities of 220 million acres of reasonable fertile timberlands must be of great industrial importance.

In the second place let us consider what the production of such an area is likely to amount to. It is not in good condition at present. It has been unwisely handled and greatly damaged by fire. Its present productiveness has been greatly impaired, but, it has by no means been destroyed. What the region is producing now by growth no one knows. Much less can we estimate its productive capacity fifty years from now. Future productiveness depends upon many factors all of which are variable. There are variations in soil, variations in character and present conditions of forest. There will be great variation in the treatment to be given this property from this time on.

In spite of these variations or possibly because of them we can best assume that the sum total of influence is going to operate in the direction of an increasing volume of timber growth and a continuing large

production on the part of timber industries. Perhaps the curve of production will drop in the immediate future. If so we may expect after a few years at the low mark to see it begin again to rise in a movement that is likely to continue through many years.

With a reasonable good growing stock of timber and conditions of management, let us say, on par with present standards of farming the south would grow as much timber as the entire nation requires for its timber industries.

But the question will arise, is any movement of this kind imminent and when is it likely to start? The correct answer seems to be that it started fully ten years ago, and that already we are feeling its effects. In fact they are marked Today a very substantial percentage of southern pine lumber is coming from second growth forests. That crop came by chance. It is nature's gift to us in spite of heedlessness, neglect and blind disregard of possibilities. The percentage of lumber coming from this class of timber increases every year. Before another 25 year period passes it will furnish the entire output of southern lumber. The current has set very strongly towards increasing production from this class of timber. In actual fact it is not over emphasis to say that during the past year, second growth forests in the south have moved to the center of the stage.

It is the utilization, further development and extension of second growth forests that today commands attention of lumbermen, foresters, and many public agencies. This is the key to the problem of making the 200 million acres of southern timberlands an asset of tremendous industrial and national importance. It is not enough to say that second growth forests in the south now command attention. It is more accurate to say that a movement to utilize, develop and extend these forests is rapidly taking shape.

What are the factors that are today shaping and giving direction to this movement? There are a number but I will mention only three. First among them is the solid and forward-looking lumber company. The company that has been financially successful and retired its indebtedness, that has not dissipated its holdings, that either by chance or forethought has maintained a considerable stock of growing timber, that has put a good deal of its earnings back into the development of its property, that has not too long a list of stockholders out of intimate touch with the problems and opportunities. It is such companies—only a few of them as yet-who have gained the vision of renewed forests, perma

nent operations, steadily growing communities and expanding dependent industries. Yes, more than that, the vision of sons succeeding fathers in the management and upbuilding of great timber industries without the necessity of hopping here, there, and yonder to find a body of timber to work on. The year 1925 saw announcement from a number of important groups of decisions to act in this direction. Many more have the subject under serious consideration.

Second among the influences playing into this movement I mention the solid and forward-looking forester. The foresters who have had considerable experience in dealing with the reforestation problem in general and at least know how to study that problem for a particular locality or property; these are the men whose work is bearing fruit in the south today. These men, and I am glad to say there are a number of them, can sit down with the manager or owner of a lumber operation and talk convincingly of the possibilities and advantages of permanent operation, the steps necessary to be taken to prepare the property in question for continous production, and stimulate a desire to act in that direction.

It is not one man who must be convinced. It is every official of the company. They cannot always be seen together. There are sometimes months of waiting. It takes unending patience sometimes and sometimes it takes quick, snappy action. Yes indeed the forester is an important factor. He is the starting motor in the big machine. But this is his first part. He has much more to do. It is his province to lay out the plans, and get them going. He must train the entire force to new ideals and new methods. This is the fine part of the work, as all foresters of such experience will agree. It is picking the fruit of our labors and the labors of many others before us. It is at last getting results on the ground that every body can see. So important is the private forester that I have learned of no case where any considerable progress has been made without him.

Third among important influences towards reforestation in the south I place the public cooperating agencies, including the Forest Service, State Forestry Departments, Tax Bureaus and organizations such as the American Forestry Association and Southern Forestry Congress. Perhaps this should have been mentioned first for it is very important. These agencies have done much already and in the future can do much more. They can greatly aid to make conditions favorable for progress in reforestation. They must continue to educate the public and give them constant help in getting the public to sense its responsibilities in the great

problem of reforestation. The cooperation of every agency is enormously important to overcome the inertia that today is the greatest obstacle to advancement.

What the Federal Government and the States may do in acquiring lands and producing forests is important so far as it goes. It does not at present promise to go far enough to become a very big factor in the final solution of the Southern Reforestation Problem.

Let me close by coming back to the question that seems to be implied in my subject. We should think of it in terms of National well-being and prosperity. My answer to the question is that in the next fifty years as in the last fifty the forests of the South will play a very important part in our National well-being and prosperity. General application of forestry will be the impetus by which this will be accomplished.

FORESTRY AND THE LUMBER INDUSTRY

E. F. ALLISON, Allison Lumber Co.

It becomes apparent that Forestry and the Lumber Industry must form an ever closer alliance for they are becoming more and more dependent one upon the other.

We lumbermen, of course, are looking to the conservation of our present forest and the growing of timber as the means of perpetuating our great industry, the products of which enter so intimately into the daily lives of all people and in so many homely and commonplace ways that they often escape attention, but these products are an irreplaceable part of the roadbed of our great railways; the luxuries and necessities of life are stored and shipped in containers of wood or wood products; wood is in our homes, in our automobiles, in the toys of our children, in the heels of our flappers' shoes and our best corn is aged in it.

In the early days of lumber manufacturing, the stands of timber of the best quality covered vast areas of land but the demand for lumber was not great and the uses to which it was then put required such strength and durability that it was economically possible for the lumbermen to cut only the choicest trees, also to utilize only a small part of the trees that were felled. This created a great waste in the very cream of the forest but had the effect of conserving the young timber and most especially, the quick growing varieties. This forced conservation served to guarantee the succeeding generation an adequate supply of lumber at

reasonable prices even though the consumption of lumber was steadily increasing and wasteful processes of logging and manufacturing were employed. However, the forest areas were still vast and many manufacturers were using stumpage cost rather than replacement values in determining cost of lumber manufacture.

An ever-increasing and broadening demand for lumber brought more and more species of trees into commercial use until finally, practically speaking, all trees have a commercial value. Up to that point, the lumber consumers were the conservationists and were responsible for the slender unbroken thread of conservation running through this entire period.

The manufacturer at last began to experience difficulty in replacing logs with mature trees, and then begins his conversion to conservation. His first step was in taking better care of his logs and their products, a closer utilization of the log through improvement of manufacturing processes; a better care of the lumber, but he was still laboring under the belief that more trees were waiting his call, only they were a few miles farther off and when at last he goes out to secure these trees, he finds that some distant neighbor manufacturers have bought part of them and two or three gasoline portables have worked up some of the corners and anyhow there are not so many trees there as he had been led to hope. He buys what is left of them and when he looks over this inadequate supply, shuts his eyes, signs the check, he resolves to eleminate every possible waste not only in the processes of harvesting the timber and the conversion into lumber but in the elimination of dangers to his standing timber. In protecting his standing merchantable timber, the voung trees are given their opportunity and even the seedling is given its chance for life. Thus, through purely economic forces, the course of the manufacturer is directed into conservation, not only of the merchantable timber on his lands but as incidental there-to, the seedlings and the very sources of propagation. So long as the manufacturer posesses merchantable timber of considerable bodies, it is sound business for him to give it protection and as a consequence of this protection, the seedlings and bushes, the hope for posterity's timber supply, are given protection. But we near the time in the Southland when merchantable stands are becoming scarce, smaller and more scattered. The great timber regions of the East and Mid-West have already reached that stage, and the consequent cost of protection from fires, become greater. Also as the timber in the hands of the manufacturer dwindles the tax and the investment in the logged-over areas becomes more and more burdensome on the