The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1918-01-31
THE TOPEKA STATE JOURNAL
INFORMATION BUREAU
~ FREDERIC }. HAsKIN. Director.
Washington, ID. O.
LUMBER AND HOMES.
The Government Is Developing Poll
cy for Colonizing Soldiers on Forest



Lands.
Washington, D. c., Jan. 2s.-The
lumberjack of today is a man with
out a home. During the winter he
lives in logging camp in frozen
woods. In the spring he spends his
earnings in few riotous days which
are the natural reaction from long
months of lonely and unnatural life
in the wilderness. He has neither
house, wife nor property. He is no.
toriously a malcontent, a problem
II the policy now being developed
by the Labor Department is enacted
into law by congress, the lumberjack
may become a householder, living
upon the forest which affords him
labor, getting fair share of the pro-
duct of that labor. and having all the
advantages of education self govern
ment and family life that go with, a
settled existence.
The National Forests could furnish
the timber resources for inaugurat ting
this new method of producing homes
and lumber. The millions of men
who will return from European bat
tlefields to find a new place in life
will furnish abundant human material.
Indeed such plan may have to
be put into operation in part before
the war IS over. The government has
already had trouble in getting. from
timber operations under private con-
troll, enough of the Sitka spruce which
1t needs for building aeroplanes, and
it has been considering plans for di-
rect operation-of the spruce forests.
This whole scheme for the colon
ization of soldiers on government for
eStS is not so much a departure from
present methods of numbering as it is
part of a more rational method for
administering all natural resources,
which is being adopted thru force of
n r,f h. q
policy of Indignation, as distinguish
ed from the old and dying policy of
"diSintegration' of the nation s
sources of life. We have heretofore
distributed these sources among the
people without regard to the resultant
forms of ownership and utilization. In
the future we must, as other civilized
nations have done, keep these re-
sources together and under our con-
troll, so that they will yield the great
est possible product of material and
of human happiness. The war has
greatly emphasized the need for the
integration policy because it has re-
vealed the fact that we no longer have
resources to waste, and because it
means that millions of returned SOL
diers will have to be relocated in the
industrial and social life of the nation
after the war is over
The waSteful results of the policy of
disintegration are visible on every
hand. We have allowed our timber
lands to be taken up >by spectators
and homesteaders, we have given
them to railroads, and sold them to
corporations. The result is that the
country contains vast areas of waste
stump lands which have been cut in
a way to prevent forest reproduction,
and the end of our timber supply is in
sight. Our agricultural lands have
been dissipated in the same way.
Thousands of settlers have taken up
homesteads which they have been I'M
able to improve; great areas of arid,
swamp and cut-over lands are unpro-
ductive for lack of a cooperative
method of retaining them. Millions
of people are shivering this winter be-
cause larges parts of our coal lands
have been allowed to get beyond the
control of the nation, and have been
selfishly or wastefully used.
The new process of integration has
already begun, and its practicabillty
has been established by test, in re-
gard to all of these resources. Thus
the putting of the remaining forest
lands of the public domain into ma
tional forests; the establishment of
the reclamation service to make arabic
the arid lands of the west, the gov
eminent railroad and the coal leasing
system in Alaska-au these are steps
in pursuance of the Indignation policy.
All of these measures have been
opposed by elements in congress which
favor a return to the old process of
disintegration. These interests have
fought valiantly for throwing the tim
Der lands of the national forests open
to entry under the homestead laws.
They have twice defeated a coal-leas-
ing bill in the senate. To the vast
majority of American citizens con-
tinuation of this policy of disintegra-
ton means loss and want. Their only
hope of having enough coal, enough
lumber. enough food for their needs.
and a fair share in the profit of de-
veloping resources, lies in this grow
ing policy of integration, which means
keeping these resources in large units
under the control of the people.
The proposed further application Of
the policy of Indignation to the ma
tionaI forests is based upon the fact,
which is well known to technical for
esters, and is the basis of forestry in
Europe, that an area of forest land
can be so utilized that by the time it
has all been cut over once, the timber
at the starting point will have grown
large enough to be cut again. In this
way a forest may be made a home for
men, just>-aS well as farm land. To
be sure, it will support much smaller
population per acre; but as now
managed, American forests support
practically no permanent homes, and
only a scant population of vagabonds.
Furthermore, the presen. unscien-
tific methods do not tend toward
steady lumber market, and they do
destroy the source of lumber supply.
On the national forests, however, the
government enforces scientific cutting
of the timber, but it has not in the
past paid sufficient attention to the
social condition of the men who cut
the timber. Under the policy now
contemplated. and being made neces-
sary by the exigencies of the war. the
forests would support maximum
number of homes as well as produce a
maximum amount of lumber.
On typical area of land, repre-
sentative of an average logging unit
or valley in the western national for
ests> and covering perhaps 100000
acres of timber, series of operations
Il ral.a cd -ah1 s-t,o h