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FORESTRY

ITS PLACE IN THE ECONOMIC LIFE
OF THE SOUTH

TWO ADDRESSES MADE AT THE EIGHTH
ANNUAL MEETING OF THE

orth Carolina Forestry Association

IN WILMINGTON, N. C., JAN. 25, 1918

SCIENTIFIC LAND CLASSIFICATION THE BASIS
OF PRACTICAL FORESTRY AND STOCK
RAISING IN THE SOUTH

By Clement S. Ucker
AND

FOREST PROTECTION AN ECONOMIC
NECESSITY

By J. A. Mitchell

OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY
CHAPEL HILL, N. C.
MARCH, 1918

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Che horth Carolina Forestry Association

President
Miss Jutia A. THorNs, Asheboro

First Vice-President
Joun J. Briarr, Wilmington

Secretary-Treasurer
J. S. Hotmes, Chapel Hill

Executive Committee

INVASURUAN, JOR RR WSO eel co a) Goldsboro
Chie Smoot a ee ical aaa aC! Sh North Wilkesboro
CAT TAMING VROBERS | YASay cM i AikUNG ae UN |.) 52 a Asheville
Mrs) Ot Hien REED PASGRONI AL meine. Sues NUR eS Charlotte
JOSEPH ED VDe VP RA sity Aw aay 200) She VA CE Chapel Hill

The President and Secretary.

By Tronefre
MAY 20 jo19

PREFACE

In his foreword to “Wild Life, Forests and the War,” Dr.
Wm. T. Hornaday says: “Notwithstanding the anxieties and
efforts inseparable from war with a great military power,
other paramount duties of the American people should be reso-
lutely performed. The nation is sufficiently populous and re-
sourceful to do this. Even with war upon us, taxes must be
paid, children must be educated, and the general welfare of the
people must be promoted. Likewise the resources of nature
must be protected from neglect and destruction. It is impera-
tive that our national heritage of forests and wild life should
be resolutely safeguarded.”

The North Carolina Forestry Association was organized
in 1911. Its purpose was and still is: “To promote the pro-
tection of the forests of North Carolina from fire and from
destructive insects, and to promote their perpetuation by wise
use and by the reforestation of cut-over and abandoned lands.”
It has held annual conventions every year since then, as well
as a number of intermediate meetings. It has been one of the
principal motive forces in securing an excellent forest law for
North Carolina. It intends to continue the fight for forest pro-
tection until that law is supported not only by an adequate ap-
propriation, but by the opinion and co-operation of all the good
people of this State.

After reading the two addresses included in this pamphlet,
it will be seen that no apology is needed for bringing this sub-
ject before the public at this time of national stress. As Mr.
Mitchell says, “The elimination of waste is a national necessity.
With a rapidly diminishing natural resource like our forests,
poor utilization and unnecessary destruction are equally crimi-
nal. It behooves foresters, timberland owners, and lumbermen,
iherefore, as a patriotic duty, as well as a vital necessity, to
work together to eliminate them.”

If this little book brings home to its readers as clearly as
did the speakers to the forestry convention, the fact that for-
estry must become as much a part of our economic life as
are agriculture and stock-raising, then its purpose will have
been accomplished and its publication justified.

Forestry: Its Place in the Economic

Life of the South

SUMMARY

IN THE WORDS OF THE AUTHORS

Mr. Clement S. Ucker, vice-president, Southern Settlement
and Development Association, Baltimore, said:

“T have been more and more struck with the wanton waste,
the absolute lack of preparation for the future which charac-
terizes the use of our natural resources in America. This
does not apply alone to our forests but it applies to our streams,
our mineral deposits—it applies even to the original fertility
of the soil itself.”

“This (South Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plain area) also
happens to be the great yellow pine belt of the United States. It
also happens that about eighty-six per cent of the world’s naval
stores, turpentine and rosin, comes from this area and accord-
ing to the best figures obtainable, at the present ratio of in-
crease in population and in destruction of the forest, twenty-
five years will see its final passing. No substitute has as yet
been secured for naval stores—turpentine and rosin—and it
is doubtful if one will be found.”

“When the naval stores and timber operators had passed
they had left behind them a by-product, viz: Cut-over lands.
Then came the land exploiter.

“Generally speaking the land owner found himself face to
face with one of three courses.

“First: Let his lands go back to the State for taxes and be
considered for all time as having shirked his responsibilities.

“Second: If you will pardon the language,—find an ‘easy
one’ and unload the problem on him. But that did not solve
the problem, for it still remained in the hands of the vendee
as much a problem as in the hands of the vendor.

“Third: Put it to a present day beneficial use on a broad

6 Forestry’s PLACE IN THE LIFE OF THE SOUTH

scale against the day when there would be a sufficient demand
for his land to make it really worth while to sub-divide it.”

Dr. Geo. M. Rommel, Chief of Animal Husbandry, Bureau
of Animal Industry, U. S. Department of Agriculture, was
quoted as saying:

“The area of these lands is estimated at approximately
76,000,000 acres, to which the cutting of timber is adding about
10,000,000 acres each year. Eventually the total extent of the

cut-over timber lands of the South will be in the neighborhood
of 300,000,000 acres, which is greater than the present unsettled
public domain of the United States.

“To develop these lands as farms will not only require im-
mense sums to equip them, but equally great amounts to clear
them and make them ready for crop production. With the
present shortage of agricultural capital in the South, it does
not require the exercise of much imagination to realize what
would be the effect of an attempt to develop them at this time
as farming regions.

“To get enough competent men to develop these areas for
cattle or sheep ranching will be a serious problem but not an
insoluble one.”’

Mr. Ucker again said:

“Taking into consideration the climate, location, rainfall,
and luxuriant vegetation, the South Atlantic and Gulf Coastal
Plain area was intended by nature for this very pursuit and it
would have, no doubt, long ere this been satisfactorily engaged
in this line had it not been for the presence of the Texas fever
cattle tick. But, some day we are going to finish the task of
eradicating the tick; we are going to secure the enactment of
some legislation with respect to primary sanitation as a means
of prevention of cholera amongst hogs; and we are going to
control the predatory dog. We are going to improve our pas-
ture grasses and import better blood and teach our people that
while they should not raise less cotton, they should also raise
more livestock and grain and forage.

“After the range always comes the plow. That has been
the experience in the West. Range lands have passed into
plow lands. It has been found more profitable to raise grain
than to raise livestock.

“Always I have foreseen that sooner or later the problem

ForeEstry’s PLACE IN THE LIFE OF THE SOUTH 74

of reforestation comes before us. If I should personally re-
main in this work I should have liked to have handled it in due
course, not as a State matter but as a matter of topographical
sub-divisions.

“The public domain is gone. Our land hunger for the
future must be satisfied from those areas that, while they have
passed into private ownership, are nevertheless idle. What
shall be done? Will the Federal government stand placidly by
and allow fraud and misrepresentation, or will the Federal
government seek to regulate the thing in co-operation with
the states?

“Tt seems to me that the day has now arrived when we are
face to face with land classification as a basis for further agri-
cultural development; and with land classification there un-
doubtedly comes reforestation.

“T would have them divide the lands into A, B, and C
classes.

“Class A—Those immediately available for general agricul-
ture.

“Class B—Those adapted to grazing, and with the grazing
where practicable, reforestation.

“Class C—Those which will not be during our generation
or the next, fit for either farming or grazing, those I would de-
vote to reforestation.

“The naval stores and yellow pine industry of the South
Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plain area, should, by all means,
be saved to the nation and to the world. Practical develop-
ment on a broad scale, coupled with conservation, should fol-
low topographical and not State lines.

“We should work for Federal action with respect to land
classification, as well as co-ordinating state action in this direc-
tion. The whole forestry question in the South should be dis-
cussed, especially with respect to the Coastal Plain area, at
the earliest practicable date, by a general gathering at a central
point for such purpose, to which should be invited Federal rep-
resentatives, representatives of all the states and the owners of
the large areas of unused, idle, cut-over lands.”

Mr. J. A. Mitchell, forest examiner, U. S. Forest Service,
said:

“Tt behooves the owner of cut-over land, as a business prop-

8 ForESstTRY’s PLACE IN THE LIFE OF THE SOUTH

osition, to see to it that his land is producing something to meet
the demands upon it in the way of taxes and carrying charges.
There are three possibilities: Agriculture, grazing, forestry.

“Forestry has no quarrel with either agriculture or grazing,
In fact, for their mutual good all three should go hand-in-hand.
That every acre of land should be put to its highest use on the
earliest date at which it is economically possible goes without
saying. What foresters as well as the community at large
rightfully object to is the unnecessary idleness of vast areas
pending intensive development. This is particularly true at
this time of national stress and intensified demand for forest
products.

“In the South alone it is estimated that ten million acres
are cut over annually—an area that would require, on a 100-
acre basis, 62,500 families to colonize, to say nothing of live
stock and capital. It is evident, therefore, that regardless of
agricultural possibilities much of the cut-over land of the
South will remain undeveloped for a good many years for a
lack of men, stock and money to develop it. In view of this
condition, it would seem to be a matter .of good business as
well as a patriotic duty to grow another crop of timber on
lands not subject to immediate development.

“What the South needs is a definite workable forest policy,
backed by the people, the State and the Federal government.
It should know:

“(1) What its potential timber resources are.

“(2) Which soils are best suited to agriculture, grazing or
timber production.

“(3) The possibilities and tendencies of agricultural de-
velopment from an economic standpoint.

“(4) The best methods of insuring, protecting and increas-
ing a crop of timber on lands unsuited or not immediately
needed for agricultural or other uses.

“All this can best be accomplished by the joint efforts of
private owners, the State and the Federal government.

“These efforts can be greatly facilitated if the states will
recognize their responsibilities. To this end the Federal gov-
crnment, private owners and citizens who have the welfare of
the country at heart, should combine to urge the state legisla-
tures to adopt effective legislation and to support it with ade-
quate apropriations.”’

Scientific Land Classification the Basis of
Practical Forestry and Stock Rais-
ing in the South

By CLEMENT S. UCKER

Vice-President Southern Settlement and Development Association
Baltimore, Maryland

In accepting the invitation which was extended to me
through Mr. Holmes, I did so in complete consciousness of the
fact that I was but poorly qualified to discuss this question
from the standpoint of the scientific or statistical forester. At
the same time I was fully conscious of the fact that I would
have very little time to devote to research work in the interval.
1 come to you, therefore, not as a forester, not as one who has
long given time to research and to thought upon forestry prob-
iems, not as one prepared to give you data, statistics and com-
parative deductions, but to make certain pronouncements with
respect to the necessity for reforestation or conservation of
those forests still remaining.

My work for the past four years in the Southern country
has led me into many bypaths and as the months have passed
onward, I have been more and more struck with the wanton
waste, the absolute lack of preparation for the future which
characterizes the use of our natural resources in America.
This does not apply alone to our forests but it applies to our
streams, our mineral deposits: it applies even to the original
fertility of the soil itself. We have been, and are, a spendthrift
nation. ‘The wealth which we have accumulated has been
largely, if not entirely, from our natural resources—that which
stuck to our fingers in spite of our efforts to rid ourselves of it.

My connection during the past four years has been with
the Southern Settlement and Development Organization, a
Maryland corporation, enjoying a special charter by act of the
Maryland legislature ; a quasi public service corporation, if you
will, inhibited by its charter from operating for profit, from
owning or vending lands; created for studying agricultural

10 ForEstry’s PLACE IN THE LIFE OF THE SOUTH

and industrial development. It was first conceived by the late
Mr. Finley, of the Southern Railway, who foresaw the necessi-
ty for conservative agricultural development in the Southern
territory as against the day when the natural resources should
have passed away and the vast areas left behind by the “ax-
man’’ should pass into beneficial use. Our charter, the man-
date to myself and my associates, was “to make a thorough,
complete and scientific study of the area embraced in the
states of Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ten-
nessee, North and South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama,
Louisiana, Georgia and Florida—twelve in number—and to
devise the most practical method of developing their idle, ag-
ricultural lands and their latent industrial possibilities.”

One of the first deductions forcing itself upon my mind,
was that broad constructive development—empire building, if
you will, rebuilding would be better—should follow topo-
graphic, divisional lines rather than artificial or state lines.

Physically, the South is divisible into three separate areas,
being somewhat similar in this respect to Caesar’s description
of ancient Gaul. These are the Mountain section, the Piedmont
section and the Coastal Plain area, and this division is pretty
well maintained, at least in equivalent, even in the Mississippi
Valley. A further critical investigation indicates that eighty-
five per cent of the cry in the Southern country for assistance
in development comes out of the Coastal Plain area. From
the standpoint of the practical developer, one would not be
presumed to devote his efforts to the mountain territory to the
exclusion of the lowlands, nor would he endeavor to make a
more or less doubtful effort with respect to the abandoned
plantations of the Piedmont section. Therefore, our work for
several years past has lain almost exclusively in the Coastal
Plain area of the South Atlantic and Gulf States and in the
thought that if there could be firmly builded and securely an-
chored in this territory a constructive movement, that it would
eventually spread into the Piedmont and Mountain regions.

Let us glance for a bit at the South Atlantic and Gulf
Coastal Plain area—that section which lies along the ocean and
the gulf, from Norfolk on the north to Galveston on the
south, and which may be readily traced by a line from Norfolk
to Richmond, to Raleigh, to Columbia, Augusta through Ma-

ForESTRY’S PLACE IN THE LIFE OF THE SOUTH i

con to the Alabama line, then across Alabama and Mississippi,
embracing Louisiana and Southeast Texas. This gives us
southside Virginia, eastern North Carolina, eastern South Car-
colina, south and central Georgia, all Florida, southern Ala-
bama, southern Mississippi, Louisiana and southeastern Texas.
This also happens to be the great yellow pine belt of the United
States. It also happens that about eighty-six per cent of the
world’s naval stores, turpentine and rosin, comes from this
area and according to the best figures obtainable, at the present
ratio of increase in population and in destruction of the forest,
twenty-five years will see its final passing. No substitute has
as yet been secured for naval stores—turpentine and rosin—
and it is doubtful if one willbe found.

The questions naturally arise, “Need we save them? Are
they necessary to the world’s progress?” I am told that there
is a fringe of this timber throughout Mexico and Central
America, disappearing in South America. Its extent, its
availability, we know little or nothing of so far as I am able
to ascertain from inquiry and research. I am told that the
other fourteen per cent of the world’s naval stores is had
mainly from France from trees that have been grown through
reforestation, involving long and careful effort, on the sand
dunes of France.

Let us glance for a moment at the actual transformation
scene prior to the eighties. The territory whose boundary I
have outlined for you was pretty nearly an unbroken forest.
With the passing of the white pine belt of the North, it became
profitable to exploit the timber of the Southern yellow pine
belt. With the increased demand for turpentine and rosin it
was discovered that the saw man could profitably follow the
turpentine box, so-called.

According to my information, it had been the practice
growing out of a popular belief that a turpentined tree was un-
fit for lumber, to abandon it. We then witnessed a steady
progress southward; Norfolk, Wilmington, Charleston, Sa-
vannah, Jacksonville and Pensacola have successfully been the
seats of the naval stores industry and the mill men have fol-
lowed after and have kept just a few years behind the crest
of the turpentine still. These lands have been owned in large

12 ForeEstRY’s PLACE IN THE LIFE OF THE SOUTH

areas. It was necessary to acquire them in large areas to fi-
nance their operation.

When the naval stores and timber operators had passed
they had left behind them a by-product, viz: Cutover lands.
Then came the land exploiter. In some instances he was suc-
cessful. In and about Norfolk, Virginia, have been some
very successful operations but for a highly specialized purpose.
About Wilmington, North Carolina, and about Charleston, Ss:
C., there have been marked successes with enormous prices or
rises in land values. In Florida a number of ventures were
made along highly specialized lines—citrus fruit, pecans, to-
bacco, cotton, truck—with varying degrees of success but gen-
erally speaking the naval stores and timber operators have
manufactured ‘“‘cut-over land” faster than demand for homes
could absorb the excess. The result was the timber operator
suddenly found himself, as was the case in Florida, by reason
of the good roads movement, the better school movement, or
“The Renaissance” period in county court houses, with a few
hundred thousand acres of land in a county that had but re-
cently voted anywhere from five hundred to fifteen hundred
thousand dollars in bonds. We have never found a successful
method of retiring a county bond issue except by tax on land.
Therefore, the non-active or practically non-active timber
companies or naval stores companies or land companies found
themselves with a non-productive liability on their hands and
an ever increasing tax bill. The situation became acute in
Florida and it will become acute in eastern North Carolina
whenever the day of good roads is really upon you.

Now over all of this land there has roamed the inbred,
underfed, neglected, tick infested cow, belonging to some one
who was, generally speaking, raising cheap beef on the other
man’s land at nothing per acre. The owner had no use for his
iand and the cow owner considered that he had an ancient,
immemorial vested right to free pasturage, and he was not
particular and is not now particular whether the cow is tick
infested or otherwise. It is nearly all profit to him. Gener-
ally speaking the land owner (as described), found himself
face to face with one of three courses.

First: Let his lands go back to the State for taxes and be
considered for all time as having shirked his responsibilities.

ForeEstry’s PLACE IN THE LIFE OF THE SOUTH 13

Second: If you will pardon the language,—find an “easy
one’, and unload the problem on him. But that did not solve
the problem, for it still remained in the hands of the vendee as
much a problem as in the hands of the vendor.

Third: Put it to a present day beneficial use on a broad
scale against the day when there would be a sufficient demand
for his land to make it really worth while to sub-divide it.

Now I ought to have said that it does not require a won-
derful amount of calculation to ascertain the total amount of
tomatoes, or snap beans, or cabbage, or strawberries that one
hundred million people comprising the population of the Unit-
ed States might consume under normal conditions. One can
casily compute the day when an excess acreage results in over-
production and the ruin of those so engaged and even with the
abnormal condition presented by our population flocking to
the city and our efforts to raise on highly specialized areas at
tremendous distances from the consumer, a part of our food,
presents a problem in transportation and distribution which is,
to say the least, extremely vexatious and difficult of satisfac-
tory solution and I think shows today the very decided trend
to its inevitable end, viz.: That each community, as far as pos-
sible, must supply, within a reasonable radius, its own needs.

Eliminating the highly specialized forms of agricultural ac-
tivity, it would, according to the calculation made by Dr. Geo.
M. Rommel, chief Animal Husbandry Division, Bureau of
Animal Industry, United States Department of Agriculture,
announced in a paper read before a meeting of the Southern
Cut-Over Land Bureau at New Orleans on September 27th,
last, take a million farmers to develop these now available cut-
over lands in eighty-acre tracts; or about one-sixth of the
present farming population of the United States.

I take the liberty of quoting at length from Mr. Rommel’s
address:

“The area of these lands is estimated at approximately
76,000,000 acres, to which the cutting of timber is adding about
10,000,000 acres each year. Eventually the total extent of the
cut-over timber lands of the South will be in the neighbor-
hood of 300,000,000 acres, which is greater than the present
unsettled public domain of the United States. The utiliza-
tion of these lands is therefore very much in the nature of a

14 ForEstry’s PLACE IN THE LIFE OF THE SOUTH

public obligation, and the immensity of the problem leads me
to discuss the subject somewhat extensively even at the risk
of repeating some of the statements made at your conference
in April last. I shall also take the liberty of touching on some
subjects which do not pertain directly to the necessity for in-
creased meat production but which are vital in a considera-
tion of the use of these lands for live stock raising.

“Permit me to state in simple terms the principles of the
problem as an introduction to the elaboration of the argument.
The cut-over lands of the South need constructive develop-
ment based on economic possibilities and economic needs. To
develop them for live stock production means (1) a minimum
requirement for capital, (2) a minimum need for man power
and (3) the production of human food for which there is now,
and has been for a decade and a half, the keenest need and of
which there is very little danger of over-production. To de-
velop them at this time as farming regions, on the other hand,
means, (1) exceedingly heavy demands for capital from re-
sources already taxed to the utmost, (2) a large demand for
man power on a supply already undermanned, and (3) the
production of crops in a market already adequately supplied.

“The questions of equipment and man power seem to me
among the first which must be considered. You gentlemen are
concerned with the effective utilization of areas of many mil-
lions of acres. Live stock ranches of a hundred thousand
acres are common, and ranches of several hundred thousand
cr even a million acres are in successful operation. The equip-
ment expense, therefore, to put into operation the ranching
business on these undeveloped southern lands, can be worked
cut by studying the requirements shown by the business as
already established elsewhere in the United States. In propor-
tion to the total area involved, there does not seem to be any-
thing insurmountable in this phase of the problem.

“We may take a similar view of the question of man power.
The ranching business is like any other business—the big, con-
structive leaders are rare, but, again, like any other business,
there are sufficient well trained men to take hold of any new
development of the business which is justified by circum-
stances, which promises to be successful and which is backed
by sufficient capital to develop it.

ForkEstry’s PLACE IN THE LIFE OF THE SOUTH 15

“Now let us supply these two factors to the development
of the cut-over lands on a purely agricultural basis under pres-
ent conditions. Use the 160-acre homestead factor and sup-
pose we start in with the 76,000,000 acres now on our hands.
Where, in the first place, would the money come from to de-
velop more or less half a million additional farms in this ter-
ritory? We must not ignore the fact that the great obstacle
to the diversified farming movement in the South is not the
colored brother, nor the landlord’s indisposition to grow any-
thing but cotton until the boll weevil wakes him up, nor even
the cattle tick. It is the fact that many, if not most of the
banks in the South which make a business of agricultural loans
have only sufficient capital to finance the cotton crop. To de-
velop these lands as farms will not only require immense sums
to equip them, but equally great amounts to clear them and
make them ready for crop production. With the present short-
age of agricultural capital in the South, it does not require
the exercise of much imagination to realize what would be
the effect of an attempt to develop them at this time as farm-
ing regions.

“To get enough competent men to develop these areas for
cattle or sheep ranching will be a serious problem but not an
insoluble one. To get approximately half a million farmers
to develop 160-acre homesteads or a quarter of a million to
develop 320-acre homesteads is a practical impossibility. There
are approximately six million farmers in the United States.
If the drafting of a small percentage of their employes into
the army is working a hardship on the owners, what hope is
there then to get nearly ten per cent of the owners of farms
elsewhere to undertake the agricultural development of these
cut-over lands? Men of no experience in agriculture could not
be depended upon if they were available, and this phase of
the qeustion seems to settle itself with the mere statement of
the facts.”

Therefore, my activities and those of my organization
have for more than two and one-half years, been given to ad-
vocating the only broad beneficial use which we believe is ap-
plicable to this territory in our day, viz: The production of
live stock.

16 Forestry’s PLACE IN THE LIFE OF THE SOUTH

A few words with reference to our present day outlook in
that particular.

On the fifth day of September there was handed to Mr.
Hoover’s special committee on meat supply, the United States
livestock industry committee these figures, and they are pre-
sumed to be entirely reliable. They were collected by the
United States government at considerable pains.

The decrease in beef animals since the beginning of the
war, or August Ist, 1914, has been twenty-eight million, hogs
thirty-two million and sheep fifty-six million. I noted recently
figures put out by the banking institutions in New York City
to the effect that if the war in Europe were to stop today, forty
inillion head of livestock would be required as a foundation
herd to rehabilitate Europe. It is said that our western ranges
are carrying all that they may. Recent careful investigation
discloses the fact that our relief, if any, must be found on the
individual farms. The operation of the six hundred and forty
acre homestead law, that is the recent enactment by Congress
increasing the area of the individual homesteader from the
old one hundred and sixty acres to six hundred and forty acres,
it having been seen that the remaining portions of the public
domain were of less potential soil value and needed to be in-
creased in area, has operated to take away from the range man
the last remaining mile of his range. Taking into considera-
tion the climate, location, rainfall, and luxuriant vegetation,
the South Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plain area was intended
by nature for this very pursuit and it would have, no doubt,
long ere this been satisfactorily engaged in this line had it not
been for the presence of the Texas fever cattle tick. But,
some day we are going to finish the task of eradicating the tick;
we are going to secure the enactment of some legislation with
respect to primary sanitation as a means of prevention of
cholera amongst hogs; and we are going to control the preda-
tory dog. We are going to improve our pasture grasses and
import better blood and teach our people that while they should
not raise less cotton, they should also raise more livestock and
grain and forage.

That is what I have been and my associates have been striv-
ing for step by step—endeavoring to organize the land owners,
to band them together and bring before them the proposition

ForeEstry’s PLACE IN THE LIFE OF THE SOUTH 17

confronting us, hold the proposition up to them, the owners of
these areas of idle land. The key was in their hands and I
am bound to say that in the lower Mississippi territory, in
Florida, in Georgia, they have responded nobly and they are
today engaged in the solution of their problem. Unfortunately
the Carolinas have not been apparently quite so enthusiastic
or I should rather say that there have been some men with
just as much enthusiasm but the enthusiastic men have been
fewer than in the states further South.

After the range always comes the plow. That has been the
experience in the West. Range lands have passed into plow
lands. It has been found more profitable to raise grain than
to raise live stock.

That, in a few brief words, gives an outline of the succes-
sive steps that we have thought out and embarked upon in re-
lation to this so-called Southern problem. Always I have
foreseen that sooner or later the problem of reforestation comes
before us. If I should personally remain in this work I should
have liked to have handled it in due course, not as a state mat-
ter but as a matter of topographical sub-divisions. I would
like to have asked the United States Forest Service co-operat-
ing with the forestry bureaus or departments of the states of
Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida,
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas to have met at some
central point, to have invited the land owners themselves and to
have there established a nucleus of an auxiliary organization
that should have had for its ultimate purpose a thorough and
complete study of this problem of the coastal plain area.

If we wait for the various states to solve it, some may
never do so, others may do so, some may even make a suc-
cess of it; but so long as it is intermixed with one of our dis-
tinct American institutions, practical politics, 1 doubt whether
we get very far with it as a state matter.

Harking back to my remarks regarding the statement made
by Dr. Rommel, is it not logical that, as the months grow into
years, for highly cultivated general farming, only the better
areas should be used? That then brings us to the question of
land classification. I want to say a word here with reference to
the activities of the Federal government in the disposition of
her public domain. How she held out to every man one hun-

18 ForESTRY’S PLACE IN THE LIFE OF THE SOUTH

dred and sixty acres conditioned upon his residing upon it,
cultivating and improving the same for a period of five years.
She charged him but fourteen dollars registration fee and
gave him a deed in fee simple, but she maintained, or at least
intimated that any one hundred and sixty acres of her domain
was as good as another; or, in other words, that one hundred
and sixty acres in Iowa was no better than one hundred and
sixty acres in Arizona, and many was the homesteader who
honestly tried for five years and failed, and abandoned his
homestead—broke. I apprehend that if a private citizen had
held out as a purely commercial venture the same inducement,
or pursued the same course, he would have interviewed the
Federal grand jury in due time.

The public domain is gone. Our land hunger for the fu-
ture must be satisfied from those areas that, while they have
passed into private ownership, are nevertheless idle. What
shall be done? Will the Federal government stand placidly by
and allow fraud and misrepresentation, or will the Federal
government seek to regulate the thing in co-operation with the
states ?

It seems to me that the day has now arrived when we are
face to face with land classification as a basis for further ag-
ricultural development; and with land classification there un-
doubtedly comes reforestation. If I were to suggest a practical
plan of operation for the South Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plain
area, | would suggest the enactment by the Congress of legis-
lation creating a commision to be composed of one representa-
tive from the department of agriculture, one from the de-
partment of labor and one from the department of the interior
which has been charged with the disposition of the public do-
main of the United States. These three should constitute a
permanent Federal classification and colonization commission.
It is true that they would have no jurisdiction except in gov-
ernment owned land, but they should stand ready to aid and
assist whenever the State of North Carolina or the citizens of
that State see fit to avail themselves of the co-operation. I
would have them divide the lands into A, B, and C classes.

Class A—Those immediately available for general agricul-
ture.

ForEstry’s PLACE IN THE LIFE OF THE SoUTH 19

Class B—Those adapted to grazing, and with the grazing
where practicable, reforestation.

Class C—Those which will not be during our generation or
the next, fit for either farming or grazing, those I would
cevote to reforestation.

Now comes the crisis of the entire reforestation problem
upon lands under private ownership not within National for-
ests. Who will defray the expense? Personally, my mind is
very conclusively made up that the State must either remit the
taxes and furnish ample protection for a period of forty years
or else the owners of such lands must eventually relinquish
them to the State for taxes and the State will find itself under
the necessity of engaging in this form of activity; unless, on
the contrary, we are going to admit that we are going to con-
tinue to allow the owner or his agent to exploit the poorer
areas for practical development to the unsuspecting home-
seeker.

Now, to sum up: The nation looks to the Southeast for its
additional supply of meat and meat products. ‘This is the
unanimous conclusion on the part of thinking investigators;
therefore, the sooner the better.

The naval stores and yellow pine industry of the South
Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plain area should, by all means, be
saved to the nation and to the world.

Practical development on a broad scale, and coupled with
conservation, should follow topographic and not state lines.

Land classification, nation wide, is an absolutely essential
basis for intelligent and efficient development and conserva-
tion, and it applies with double force to the South Atlantic and
Gulf Coastal Plain area, to the longleaf yellow pine belt, be-
cause today this is the true undeveloped frontier of the United
States ; it is the last great remaining area of low priced land:
capable of high development left on the North American coti-
tinent.

North Carolina is carved about equally from the three
great topographic divisions—the Mountain, the Piedmont and
the Coastal Plain. In the Mountain section the Weeks law—
so named from Senator Weeks, of Massachusetts, its author—
is in operation. It permits the Federal government to acquire
jands by purchase for national forest purposes, and was only

20 ForEStTRY’S PLACE IN THE LIFE OF THE SOUTH

enacted after the legal minds of both houses of Congress
reached the conclusion that to stand the constitutional test it
must be based upon the fiction that it was essentially necessary
to conserve the stream flow, and thereby the navigability for
war purposes of the streams having their head waters in those
regions. Perhaps the State of North Carolina should take like
action. I am unfamiliar with the present North Carolina laws
and constitutional provisions.

With respect to the Piedmont: it is largely a matter of
educating the individual farmer or plantation owner; educa-
tional efforts should be intensive in that area, counties should
set the example, especially along the public highways.

In the Coastal Plain area, the problem is the same as in
the Coastal Plain area of every other Southern state. To my
mind it must be solved as a topographic whole.

We should work for Federal action with respect to land
classification, as well as co-ordinating state action in this direc-
tion. ‘The whole forestry question in the South should be dis-
cussed, especially with respect to the Coastal Plain area, at
the earliest practicable date, by a general gathering at a cen-
tral point for such purpose, to which should be invited
Federal representatives, representatives of all the states and
the owners of the large areas of unused, idle, cut-over lands.

Forest Protection an Economic
Necessity

By J. A. MITCHELL

Forest Examiner, Office of State Cooperation,
U. S. Forest Service

More and more forcibly each day is the fact being brought
home to all of us that a world crisis is at hand, that the old
order of things is passing and that out of this baptism of fire
we call “War” a new race, new institutions and a new peopie
will emerge. Whether it be a better world to live in or a worse,
whether we as a nation are purified or destroyed, depends on
the way in which we rise to meet the new burdens and respon-
sibilities that are daily being thrust upon us. The world is
moving at a tremendous pace—the events of years are being
crowded into days and the demands on our national resources
have increased by leaps and bounds. Production can be speeded
up; but as our natural resources are fixed or limited by natural
laws, present output can be increased only by discounting the
future. Elimination of waste is, therefore, a national necessity.
This is particularly true of the lumber business as of all other
industries essential to the winning of the war and to our na-
tional welfare. With a rapidly diminishing natural resource
like our forests, poor utilization and unnecessary destruction
are equally criminal. It behooves foresters, timberland own-
ers and lumbermen, therefore, as a patriotic duty as well as
vital necessity, to work together to eliminate them.

In the lumber industry as in all other lines of endeavor, the
loss incident to poor utilization is beginning to be recognized
and efforts are being made to eliminate it. The greater waste
resulting from forest fires, however, being less obvious, is
generally overlooked in the struggle for maximum production.

Without doubt, fire is the greatest of all wasters, both of
property and of our forest resources. It is also the least
excusable, since it can largely be prevented. In the case of
property, loss by fire is guarded against to some extent and

22 ForEstRy’s PLACE IN THE LIFE OF THE SOUTH

fire insurance is a matter of course. In our forests, on the
other hand, fires are allowed to burn uncontrolled, with the
result that annually millions of dollars worth of timber and
second growth, and thousands of dollars worth of property are
needlessly destroyed—to say nothing of the frequent loss of
life and of the damage to the range. In the West the fallacy
of harmless burning has been exposed, investigation showing
that fire, no matter how light, does some damage, not to re-
production only but to mature timber as well. To the casual
observer this may seem insignificant. The damage, however,
is cumulative and the aggregate loss is enormous. In addition,
soil fertility is depleted and worthless plans replace useful
ones, as the result of frequent fires.

But the great menace unquestionably is to the future of
our timber supply. In the piney woods, particularly, repeated
fires are fatal to the establishment of reproduction; while
in the hardwoods the trees, though not always killed, are
stunted and deformed and laid open to fungus and insect
attack. As young growth seldom has an immediate com-
mercial value, its loss is usually ignored—the fact that a crop
has been destroyed being overlooked. The loss in such a
case is as real as if merchantable timber were destroyed—the
destruction of a ten-year-old stand postponing under present
conditions, the date of a possible harvest from fifteen to twen-
ty years, if not indefinitely. At the same time, the land burned
over has, to all intents and purposes, been rendered unproduc-
tive for a corresponding period. Herein lies the importance
of fire protection from an economic standpoint, for no poten-
tially productive land should be allowed to lie idle. The com-
munity has a right to and will, sooner or later, demand that
it be producing something.

Throughout the country good roads, schools and public im-
provements of all kinds are being demanded. In the long run
these will pay, for with improvement comes development; and
with development a market for both land and products, and a
corresponding increase in values. In the meantime, it be-
hooves the owner of cut-over land, as a business proposition, to
see to it that his land is producing something to meet the de-
mands upon it in the way of taxes and carrying charges.

Forestry’s PLACE IN THE LIFE oF THE SouTH 23

There are three possibilities: Agriculture, Grazing, For-
estry.

Forestry has no quarrel with either agriculture or grazing.
In fact, for their mutual good all three should go hand-in-hand.
That every acre of land should be put to its highest use on the
earliest date at which it is economically possible goes without
saying. What foresters as well as the community at large
rightfully object to is the unnecessary idleness of vast areas
pending intensive development. This is particularly true at
this time of national stress and intensified demand for forest
products.

Nor will this intensified demand end with the war. As was
recently pointed out by Raphael Zon in an article on “Forestry
After the War,” the forests of Europe are being depleted at an
appalling rate, the neutral countries already being forced to
guard their remaining supply by the most stringent restric-
tions. As a result, the forests of America and Russia will be
called upon to furnish the material for the rebuilding of Ev-
1ope; and restrictions and regulations of exploitation will be
necessary as a matter of self-protection. The longer we con-
tinue our present wasteful practices and neglect to protect our
present and potential forest growth, the more stringent will
these regulations be when necessity forces them upon us.

In the South alone it is estimated that ten million acres
are cut over annually—an area that would require, on a 160-
acre basis, 62,500 families to colonize, to say nothing of live
stock and capital. It is evident, therefore, that regardless of
agricultural possibilities much of the cut-over land of the South
will remain undeveloped for a good many years for a lack of
men, stock and money to develop it. In view of this condi-
tion, it would seem to be a matter of good business as well as
a patriotic duty to grow another crop of timber on lands not
subject to immediate development. This is particularly true
since in most cases fire-protection, supplemented by adequate
stock laws, is all that is needed to insure a second crop that will
yield a fair return on the investment. In the South, where
growth is rapid and reproduction readily established, this is
especially true.

What the South needs is a definite workable forest policy,

24 ForEstRY’s PLACE IN THE LIFE OF THE SOUTH

backed by the people, the State and the Federal government.
It should know

(1) What its potential timber resources are.

(2) Which soils are best suited to agriculture, grazing or
timber production.

(3) The possibilities and tendencies of agricultural devel-
epment from an economic standpoint.

(4) The best methods of insuring, protecting and increas-
ing a crop of timber on lands unsuited or not immediately
needed for agricultural or other uses. All this can best be ac-
complished by the joint efforts of private owners, the State and
the Federal Government.

Speaking for the Forest Service, it stands ready to lend its
aid:

(1) In co-operating with the states in fire protection under
the Weeks law.

(2) In assisting groups of large timberland owners by ad-
vice in the solution of their common industrial forest prob-
lems.

(3) In co-operating with State agencies in assisting the far-
mer and small woodland owner through county agents and
demonstration work under the Smith-Lever law.

(4) In making investigations as to the proper managemert
of forest lands and the relationship of forestry to fire and
grazing.

These efforts can be greatly facilitated if the states wil!
recognize their responsibilities. To this end the Federal gov-
ernment, private owners and citizens who have the welfare of
the country at heart, should combine to urge the state legisla-
tures to adopt effective legislation and to support it with ade-
quate appropriation.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

AION

00009212541