The Chronicle-star combined with the Moss Point advertiser., 1945-06-15


of approximately $3.50, 600 900 in
plants. Likewise wood, the bas-
is raw product, is necessary to
continue employment to many
thousands of persons. engaged in
the woods and mill operations.
At such time as these forestry
training camps can operate in
each southern state, and perhaps
only one boy from each county
attend, 1000 different farm
youths each year will have a bet
ter understanding of how much
to manage their timber crop. This
influence scattered throughout
the rural communities of the
South will have a beneficial
effect in improving forest prac-
tees to the betterment of the
timber owner as well as all wood
using industries"
To that we say amen. And
when we think back now how
the Southern long-leaf pine for
ests have been cut out and a
great portion of the forest area
blasted through sheer ignorance
or avarice, we can only wish
that the wood using industries
had started such a program of
youth training and conservation
forty or fifty years ago.
Once there was a magnificent
belt of pines stretching across the
coastal plain from Georgia to
Texas. To botanists it was known
as one of the "purest" stands of
trees on the face of the earth,
for the soil and the climate wer
so adapted to the pine that all
the other growths like oak and
gum were more or less driven out
by the pine forests. There was
a piney smell to the air and that
beautiful signing in the wind
that only a pine tree can make;
and the sun glinted upon this
forest of branches as on a green
sea.
And today that forest is gone,
except for little woods and patch
es here and there that only serve
to remind the Southern people
of what they have lost, And one
can drive for hundreds of miles
through cutover lands, where the
old stumps are rotting, and the
dry broomsedge grows in the
sandy soil and is not even good
pourishment for billy-goats. Eve
ry railroad passes the vine-grown
sawdust piles of the old mills,
and the rotting ties of the rail-
road spurs that once led to lum-
Der towns and camps which are
no more. Over vast areas, our
forests are gone. And only these
dead, unproductive melancholy
monuments are left on the coun-
tryside to remind us of what
the South has lost.
Several factors r to blame
for this. 1t began for one thing
with a short-sighted taxing pro-
gram, and it went on with even
more short-sighted and reckless
practices. Every taxing authority
in the Southern states commune
ties, counties and the states
themselves began to place heavy
taxes on the standing timber
that was being cut so profitably
by the mills. All standing trees
were taxed, even saplings, and
therefore to avoid these heavy
taxes the mills would come into
an area, cut everything to the
ground as rapidly as they could,
and then move oil to fresh and
profitable land. The classic slo-
gan of those days was "cut out
and get out" 1t looked as though
the forests were inexhaustible,
so on thousands of acres they
never even left a few trees for
reseeding purposes. And the sap
lings and seedlings were leveled
to the ground by the practice of
"skinning'-now illegal in most
states-by which logs were drag
ged by heavy chains and OK
teams.
No combination of government
short-sightedness and bad lum-
bering practices could have been
more effective to clean the for
ests out. LAUNDERING developed
in states like Mississippi woth
the activity of an oil boom. The
old engineers on the Gulf and
Ship Island railroad from Gulf
port to jackson and on the South
ern railroad used to joke that
there were so many numbering
towns along the way that they
had to "back up to whistle for
the next one" Most of them are
gone now-leaving only a saw
dust pile and a thicket to mark
the sight.
All of this happened back in
those years when America had
not yet learned that it. too. rich
it was. could eventually
reach the last tree or the last
of oil unless the need of
conservation and reseeding was
learned. The nature of the taxes
upon natural resources was
changed in most states to excise