Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 60/Review: Green Power
Green Power is a popular presentation of the impact of Public Law 273, known as the Sustained Yield Law, upon the economic life of the Olympic Peninsula. The author traces the history of the development of the principle of cooperation between the federal government and states and private land owners in forest conservation beginning with the Weeks Law of 1911 and growing, with the Clarke-McNary law of I924 and the McNary McSweeney Law of I928, to the Sustained Yield Law of 1944.
The development of the principle of cooperation in legislation was paralleled in action by public and private land owners working together to achieve a desirable standard of forest protection and the rehabilitation of cut-over and burned-over lands. The author identifies Public Law 273 as the climax in public and private cooperation. Under this law, the only cooperative sustained yield unit in the nation was set up on the Olympic Peninsula between the U. S. Forest Service and the Simpson Logging Company in 1947. This was followed in 1949 by the Grays Harbor Federal Unit established under another section of the law.
The book tells in a general way of the improvements in the economic life of Shelton, McCleary, Elma, Montesano, and the communities on Grays Harbor as a result of the operation of these units over the first decade. It mentions the improvements in utilization of hemlock with the advent of the pulp and paper industry and the trend towards processing the raw materials from the forest closer to its ultimate use, which has resulted in maintaining the same employment with a smaller log harvest.
Green Power is not an exhaustive study of the effect of Public Law 273. It is not a source book for students of the value of the sustained yield unit. Facts are brief and generalized and presented in a series of story-style chapters rather tenuously related. National forests have been committed to continuous production and sustained yield ever since they were set up in 1905. The law simply authorizes sale of timber in the unit without competition and at appraised values where the company commits its own timber to the same plan of management as applies to the national forests. Although the author does not mention it, the Shelton Cooperative Unit results in the log supply for the dependent communities being about fifty per cent greater when the properties are managed under a common plan of management than when they are managed under separate sustained yield plans.
The author is a man who knows and loves the forest. He appreciates the relationship between the forest and man. No one can read this book without getting some feeling of how the green power of the forest can be increased and perpetuated by close and friendly cooperation between government and industry.
J. Herbert Stone