Objects of Public Control
EVERY good citizen believes that in all such questions the interest of the general public is primary, and that the real object to be secured in the handling of public resources is to bring about their widest and best use while at the same time giving the amplest range of opportunity for self-help and individual effort. All will agree that monopolistic ownership and individual control of the necessaries of life or public functions is not to be desired.
At the present time, as the majority of those who favor state control concede, the forests should remain public property. The issue as now presented is state vs. national control. In order to pass upon this issue understandingly, certain fundamental principles should be recalled and certain facts stated.
The national forests are the property of the nation. As to this there is no question. If the nation is called upon to give outright this vast property (vast and valuable both actually and potentially) to the states, then the burden is surely on the state to show how this great trust is to be administered, so that those for whom it is granted will be better, or even as well. protected than they now are in their rights in and to it.
The suggestion often advanced that other states have enjoyed properties of a similar nature and wasted or misused them, and therefore that we should be permitted to follow the same course if we so desire, does not seem to Us very conclusive. The contrary would seem taught by their experience. The direct effect of the forests on water supply and use is recognized as a fact and is considered a proper subject of national jurisdiction and control. In consequence, in some of the very states which so unwisely used their forests, the national government is now expending large sums from the national treasury to restore the forest growth on the blasted slopes of their mountain sides. The course wisdom and foresight would have prescribed was to prevent the total destruction of the forests and at the same time not only maintain a constant timber supply, but a protected stream flow as well.
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