Beauty and Common Sense

tyrannize their fellow country men. This, of course, is the reason that those with a lust for power are the enemies of the free mar ket and the encouragers of inter vention and central planning. As Trygve Hoff remarked, in an edi torial in the Norwegian weekly, Farmand, "The hallmark of the 'planned economy' is not planning. It is that it aims to concentrate . . . power in the hands of the State." ~ BEAUTY and COMMON SENSE MOST Americans respond charac teristically to the appeals for be'au tification of our country. They want to have their cities improved, to remove scars from the land scape, to have an attractive coun tryside. Conservation and preservation ist groups have been preaching this gospel for years. They have done an effective job. They have aroused the innate decency of our people; they have appealed to American love of nature and reReprinted from the March 1967 issue of N a tional Forest Products Review with permis sion of National Forest Products Association.

1967 BEAUTY AND COMMON SENSE 529 spect for the out-of-doors. What the preservationists have done, however, is to overlook a simple fact of life. This is that our nation has grown great by learning the lesson of using our natural re sources wisely, not by locking them up. The forest industries in the last 50 years have done more for true conservation than all the Izaak Walton Leagues, the Sierra Clubs, and ladies daffodil societies I umped together. They ha ve learned to perpetuate our timber resources while at the same time supplying the nation with the wood necessities of modern life. As National Forest Products Association President, Gene C. Brewer, cogently puts it: "This is one industry that takes beauty from nature, converts it into prod ucts of beauty, and restores beauty to the forest." Preservationists currently are asking for an un realistic "moon" in a manner which could result in thousands of jobless people and their forest communities economic dropouts.

They want scenic trails, wild rivers, national parks, wilderness areas, canoe preserves, monu ments, and many other things that are laudable - if taken in propor tion. But· when they seek to in dulge hobbies at the expense of sterilizing producing resources, when they seek to cut off neces sary economic production of the needs of everyday life, they are not using common sense. If the forest industries are to be continually restricted, con stantly hampered, and put out of business, how will people fulfill their most basic human needs? What is to be the source of ma terial on which to print their news letters and sermons? What will they use to build houses? What will they use for furniture? Forest in dustries, which may have become the greatest conservationists of them all, have learned to live with recreation, parks, trails, water ways, and all the rest. But they have done it by using good judg ment and common sense.

Isn't it about time for the preservationists to use some, too? Ben Moreell WE CONSERVE natural resources by using them in the most efficient and economic manner .... If a given project cannot pass the test of economics, that is a sure sign that it is not conservation but waste. Our Nation's Water Resources - Policies and Politics IJ, f/oUA P/lIlosofiAeAIVn9 f/86 Eeen 'Jounll LEONARD E. READ LIFE in the Athens of twenty-four centuries ago was relatively sim ple. Economics as a discipline had not been considered; technology as we know it was nonexistent; spe cialization in medicine, manufac turing, or any other field had scarcely begun. Computers? "Vhy, even the concept of zero was a thousand years in the future. The Athenians, by our standards, knew nothing of the complexities we ex perience in everyday life. Simple? In a sense, yes. Yet, human beings were as complex then as now. Each individual was unique. No two thought alike, or had the same incentives, talents, desires, likes, dislikes, goals, aspi rations, energies. Variation! And to the mind of a social planner this spelled chaos, humanity at sixes and sevens. How possibly 530 could order be brought out of such disorder? Precisely the same ques tion people raise today. And in spired by the same lack of under standing!