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104 Managing in the Wake of the Ax on private and state-owned forests lands.” To accomplish this, the JCF recommended quadrupling the Clarke-McNary authorization to $10 million in three $2.5 million annual increments. The states, as under the original Clarke-McNary Act, would be charged with developing and enforcing adequate fire control measures , with funds withheld if they failed to do so.175 The Timberman editorialized that “with their feet braced for something of a shock or at least a suggestion for federal regulation, the forest industries awaited the report with considerable anxiety.” However, its analysis of the report suggested a “keynote . . . of federal cooperation rather than federal domination.”176 Senator John H. Bankhead, chair of the JCF, introduced a bill to enact the recommendations, but it failed as a result of weak support from the industry and a lack of support from the Forest Service, which was still holding out for federal regulation. Both the NLMA and the Western Pine Association supported the JCF report, with the former claiming that the committee had undertaken its duties “in an atmosphere friendly to the lumber industry.”177 However, their support was not unqualified, and a number of regional associations were lukewarm toward the bill because of its suggestion of the possibility of state regulation. In December 1941, building on Bankhead’s bill, Secretary of Agriculture Claude R. Wickard again attempted to broker a bill for federal regulation but with the president’s request that it include no subsidies to timber owners, that it be entirely federal, and that it include no “matching funds” provisions. The Forest Service and Secretary Wickard’s staff eventually proposed such legislation, including complete federal control over private cutting, an increase in ClarkeMcNary funds to $9 million, a return to the early Forest Service practice of doling out technical advice to private forest owners, and a number of smaller items. The Bureau of the Budget recommended presidential approval of expanding fire protection but advised against approving federal regulation. The bureau suggested that“forestindustrialinterestswould...fightvigorouslythisregulatoryproposal” and noted that while “the views of foresters and other qualified persons . . . as to the necessity for and desirability of public regulation of forest practices are widely divergent,” both the AFA and the SAF tended to be more supportive of state-level regulation.178 The budget director—despite the JCF’s findings—argued that private forestry was proceeding nicely on its own, that the danger of timber famine was fading, and that the cooperative approach would bring about timber growth sufficient to meet national demands. The bureau dismissed the prospect of wood shortages and scotched the Forest Service’s efforts to obtain regulatory authority a second time in December 1942, when the USFS attempted to go through the War Production Board to obtain regulatory power.179 Further, in his memo to 105 Managing in the Wake of the Ax President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the director warned that “the introduction of legislation providing for federal regulation in this field will certainly arouse a majorcontroversyandwouldbeparticularlyuntimelynow[duringthewar]when unity of effort is so essential.”180 Roosevelt’s “OK,” penciled in the margins next to the director’s recommendation, indicated his desire not to inflame the timber industry over regulation, particularly since wartime lumber production was so urgent. The recommended increase in fire protection was approved, even with Roosevelt’s austere wartime mood. Through its highly organized intervention in the scope, composition, and activities of the JCF, the industry had managed to turn the agenda away from authorizing public oversight of private logging, channeling the Forest Service back into its commercially supportive, comfortable, and widely praised role of chasing fire from the woods. The regulatory battles continued, however, through World War II and on into the early 1950s under the leadership of Clapp and Watts. Watts, appointed to the top post in the Forest Service in January 1943, gave a speech in September of that year that started off a new round of sparring between the industry and the USFS on the topic of regulation. His Milwaukee address to a chapter of the SAF unveiled his belief that “comprehensive forest legislation, including but not limited to regulation of cutting practices[,] is now more urgently needed than ever before . . . I have seen much more destructive cutting than good forestry. I want to say with all the force I have that nation-wide regulation of cutting practices on private forest land under strong federal leadership is absolutely essential.”181 The emphasis on federal, rather than exclusively...

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