r a law to
allow Federal officers to render greater assistance to the state
forestry departments in fighting forest fires.

Many state laws designed to perpetuate our forests must be passed
if our remaining timber resources are to be saved. During times
when fires threaten, all the forest lands in each state should
be guarded by organized agencies. This protection should include
cut-over and unimproved land as well as timber tracts. Such a
plan would require that the State and Federal governments bear
about one-half the expenses while the private forest owners
should stand the balance. There would be special rules regulating
the disposal of slashings, methods of cutting timber, and of
extracting forest products such as pulpwood or naval stores.

If our forests are to be saved for the future we must begin
conservation at once. To a small degree, luck plays a part in
maintaining the size of the forest. Some woodlands in the South
Atlantic States are now producing their third cut of saw logs.
Despite forest fires and other destructive agencies, these
forests have continued to produce. Some of the northern
timberlands have grown crops of saw timber and wood pulp for from
one hundred fifty to two hundred fifty years. Expert foresters
report that private owners are each year increasing their
plantings on denuded woodlands. New England landowners are
planting between 12,000,000 and 15,000,000 young forest trees a
year. The Middle Atlantic and Central States are doing about as
well. To save our forests, planting of this sort must be
universal. It takes from fifty to one hundred years to grow a
crop of merchantable timber. What the United States needs is a
national forestry policy which will induce every landowner to
plant and grow more trees on land that is not useful for farm
crops. Our forestry problem is to put to work millions of acres
of idle land. As one eminent forester recently remarked, "If we
are to remain a nation of timber users, we must become a nation
of wood growers."

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SCHOOL BOOK OF FORESTRY***

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