the business policy of ‘‘cut out and get out,’’ just as they had in the Mid-
west. In the meantime, collectively, all these individuals and corporations
raised southern lumber production from . billion board feet in the s
to . billion in . The stunning figure for represents the regional
zenith. Lumber production in Virginia peaked in ; in other states, a
bit later than . Generally, while lumber and other forest products con-
tinued to dominate southern industry through at least the s, the great
wave begun during the s had crested, and a profound reconfiguration
of southern landscapes was under way.^12
First, massive clear-cutting not only removed forest canopy but, of
course, destabilized watersheds everywhere and geometrically increased
the propensity of rivers to flood in spring. The great Mississippi deluges
of , , and doubtlessly came in large part from deforestation,
both near the river and far away. Congress’s Weeks Act of aimed to re-
stabilize watersheds through government land acquisitions and reforesta-
tion programs. Restoration of landscapes demolished for private gain pro-
ceeded slowly yet deliberately and momentously. The Weeks Act should be
seen as a triumph of the maturing American conservation movement—and
of professional foresters, who were then, arguably, the soul of the move-
ment. Conservationists were typically urban northeasterners. Theodore
Roosevelt and his friend Gifford Pinchot were exemplary. Both were vigor-
ous outdoorsmen and ambitious policy makers who clearly perceived na-
tional security and prosperity as dependent on self-sufficiency in ‘‘natural
resources.’’ To conservationists, soil, water, trees, and air were all just that,
resources. Water draining into an ocean, for example, was ‘‘wasted,’’ Roose-
velt once famously declared. It should be ‘‘used,’’ and ‘‘wisely,’’ just as trees,
also essential to national well-being, had to be used with wisdom.
‘‘Wise use’’ was the mantra of both crusading editors and politicians
and degree-bearing foresters. Pinchot, chief forester of the United States
during Theodore Roosevelt’s and part of William Howard Taft’s adminis-
tration, was educated (after Yale) at the famous French school of forestry
at Nancy. Later his wealthy family funded a forestry school at Yale. Federal
foresters worked in a division of the—an appropriate association in
the important sense that foresters applied to their work principles similar
to modern, ‘‘progressive’’ agronomy: Trees, like corn, must and will be har-
vested, but humans must assume stewardship of forested landscapes just
as farmers must maintain fertility in their soils. Selective cutting is conser-
vationist, not clear-cutting, and harvested woodlots must be replanted and
protected. Forestry’s first canon, indeed, was protection of woodlands from