The Daily Alaska empire., 1947-07-14
Homestead Bill Threatens Ruthless Exploitation of
 Southeast Alaska Foresis
fcont,nuco rom Page one,

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 number of companies are pres ently negotiating with the govern ment to establish pulp and paper mills in Alaska and draw their wood supply from these National Forest lands All cutting will be done under the supervision oi the Forest Service and in accordance with assured forestry practices so that the amount removed does not exceed the amount that grows - a real cropping proposition.
 Pulp and paper mills have to be huge undertakings, 300 to 500 tons daily capaciy, and they call for i investments of % to 35 millions of dollars per plant, furnishing eln- p,oyment to thousands of workers. Ire people of Alaska have been waiting, not patiently, for years for the time when this fine industry with it's large payrolls could be started The time has Tow arrived. Real Threat
 However, the introduction in Con gress of the so-calied veterans 1 Alaska Homestead Bill' now looms as a real threat to the accom- plishment of the planned develop ment of Alaska's forests. Such leqislation, if passed. would suh- ject these publicly owned forests to worse treatment than was ap- piled to the forests of the Western { States under the Timber and Stone i Act.
 The bill would permit veterans to take up and patent tracts up to 1 o2O acres. Practically the only requirement. would be to live on the claim for six months yearly for three years, or for six months of one year if the veteran has spent two years or more Tn the Army After residence or SIX months on the land, which the claimant could spend in building a log cabin and in hunting and fishing, he could leave the tract and return to the States With a patent in his pocket to as much as 20 or 30 million board feet of timber. In fact, he might as well leave as stay, as most o1 the Alaska timber is pulp timber and cannot be brought into use unth large corporations build modern pulp mills at cost Of $2o,0ooooo or more per mill.
 Almost certainly most of the vet eran owners would eventually sell to large corporations. Even though the patent deed specified that the owner of the timber tracts had to produce sustained yield, the pub lie administrative officers would doubtless have the greatest dlifi- culty in keeping the fee simple owners from wrecking the future timber growing possibilities by i'm proper logging methods as millions of acres of heavy timber, patented under the Timber and Stone Act, were wrecked.
 Better System
 i However, the pulp company, It. self, might prefer to buy the tim Der from the Forest Service at an equitable price to be adjusted from time to time and to do the cutting under government forestry rules rather than to wait to start It's operations until it can block up from the 1,920-acre tracts the enor- nous acreage it requires to justify it's huge investment. It might well prefer to avoid either the trouble of dickering with dozens or hundreds of claimants on price and perhaps competing with spectators who would buy up veterans tracts.
 And in the meantime, Alaskans who have been longing TOT a quarter of century for these large pulp mills to build up their coun- try will have instead thousands of tracts of their best timber held by absentee veteran landlords.
 Southeast Alaska has between 5000 and 6,000 miles of shore line forested from the beach to l,5oO or 1000 feet elevation, and it could be expected that as many veterans as the timber supply could accom- modate would rush to Alaska ana block out tract of from to b miles in length along the beach and reaching inland tor half or two miles. The government would be giving the veteran bonus or 20 to 30 million board feet Of tim Der worth on the stump between s2O 900 to S40,O0O all for six months of his time spent in log capln and in one of the best vacation spots in the country.
 After 50 years of painstaking ei- fort on the part of the Federal government to build up the nation al forests as a protected national resource as sustained yield units to serve as perpetual source oi raw material, it does not seem possible that Congress will make such a tremendous reversal in pol icy. But the call to help the veteran" is popular and difficult TOT Itbo politician to ignore, even when