Areas for planning, development, and operation may well be carefully defined in advance of the carrying-out of such activities, in accordance with certain predetermined principles. Certain it is that "the groupings of regional qualities discernible and their presentation on a map [help] a given social group to understand its position, its limitations, and its possibilities. It also helps the Government to function intelligently, for government generally has to deal with regions in the concrete. Legislation cannot be designed for each square mile of land. Units of larger size or of natural associations of conditions or processes have to be taken. What are the borders of such units to be? "1

3. Integration of Activities at Different Levels of Government

a. Political Areas

It may be useful to cite more precisely by way of illustration how the Federal policy is interconnected with policies of other governmental units. Due to the division of powers under the Constitution of the United States, a forest policy requires both Federal and State action in order to be complete. While the Federal Government may itself own extensive forest lands and park areas and while it may encourage and conduct extensive research in forestry and wood uses, both legal and financial considerations, to say nothing of local policies, make it necessary for the Federal program to be supplemented by State action in establishing public forests, encouraging forest management on private lands through taxation and other means, and in protection of land-use policies by zoning powers.

Even within the State and subject to the general authorization by the State, however, there are still other political units that share in some degree in the realization of policies of national development. Thus in those States in which counties have been given the power to zone lands in order to maintain standards of wise land use, the program of the county and even township authorities may have a most important part in the fulfillment of a national forest plan. A description of the procedure in developing a zoning ordinance for a Wisconsin county recently made by a student of the administration of the zoning powers in the State shows the relationship:2

Various agencies, in the time between the adoption of the resolution and the passage of the zoning ordinance, prepare a more or less thorough survey of the county to be zoned. The resolution passed by the Marinette County board indicates the scope of this survey: "An economic survey for Marinette

1 Isaiah Bowman, Geography in Relation to the Social Sciences (Scribners, New York, 1934), p. 198.

"Mary B. Trackett, Manuscript.

County, which will tabulate by townships their trend of agricultural development, local tax expenditures, assessed valuations, roads, and school facilities from 1914 to 1928, present maps of classification settlements, crop acreage, forest areas, and idle lands." An extensive field study was made in each county; soils experts from the college of agriculture examined and classified soil types with reference to their usability for agricultural crops and forestry; representatives of the Geological and Natural History Survey examined and classified the lakes and rivers, together with the fish and aquatic vegetation in them; the forest cover and the grasses and flowers of the county were inventoried and examined for trends in disease, and drought effects were noted; the game ranging the county was taken stock of; and the topography and geological situation of the county were examined by experts. At the same time an economic survey was made; maps were prepared showing the ownership of land-whether in public or private ownership, whether entered under the forest crop law or assessed as timberland, and whether tax delinquent or not. Maps were made of operating and abandoned farms, of the markets and schools of the county, of the public utilities, and of special industries such as wood-using industries in a timber county.

When this work had been done and put into usable form so that the committee appointed by the county board could prepare a zoning map from the material given, no further compilation was necessary; for, under the Wisconsin law, the county board may enact zoning just like any other ordinance. However, it has been thought better to bring the matter more directly before the people, and in each of these counties zoning has been accomplished through an extensive educational program based on the land economic survey.

Thus in the relation of a single part of a program of national development, that relating to forests, and ignoring for the time the interdependence of this part with other related parts such as those having to do with water, power, soil erosion, transporation, and public finance, we find the need for a nice adjustment of powers and policies allotted to each successive level of government, including the Federal, State, county, and even township units. It may be added that as early as 1911 Congress in the enactment of the Weeks Act authorized the States to cooperate through interstate compacts for the joint development of their forest resources, and that in establishing the Tennessee Valley Authority, a new type of regional unit, the relation between navigation and forest management was recognized.

b. Program, Problem, or Functional Areas

Political areas are not the only limiting areal factors which are involved, however, in the realization of a national forest plan. The United States Forest Service in formulating its program, also thinks in terms of another type of region, one marked by the homogeneity of forest type, or other peculiarities of forest conditions. Its program must therefore be integrated not only with the action of States and local governments— let us say, for example, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Min

nesota-but also with the nature-determined factors of the Lake States cut-over region. It is equally obvious that in dealing with this homogeneous region its program will not only be related to the programs of the States within which some portion of this forest region falls, but also by man-determined factors of transportation and markets affecting forest industries, nearness to urban and metropolitan centers with their needs for recreational areas, and many other factors of regions that may not coincide with either the forest-type region or the political-unit region. A synthesis of these several considerations must at some point and in some way be made if the powers of the various governmental units concerned are to be wisely exercised.

c. Coordination Problems

There are three sources from which such a final synthesis, or comprehensive program, for a given area may be derived, each of which will be required to contribute its share. Two of these are governmental, and the third partly governmental. All the different levels of government-national, interstate, State, and local-and all the different departments in each of these, with responsibilities for dealing with the problems of the particular community or area under consideration must collaborate if adequate solutions for its problems are to be worked out and applied. Thus from the coordination of departments of government and the cooperation of the different units much of the comprehensive program must come. In the development of the port of New York, for example, there has been required the joint effort of many different departments in several States and cities, an interstate authority, a citizens' regional planning organization, and several departments of the National Government. But not least important in the development of policies have been organizations and individuals among the shippers, the merchants, and other groups whose functions in the whole economic system are vitally affected by the port development.

There is, therefore, a third source of policy which must be included in addition to those listed above. This is the group concerned with a single commodity (corn, wheat, hogs) or industry or trade (steel, retail dry goods) or service or profession (medicine). Organizations built about a commodity, service, or functional interest are today more clearly recognized as an important part of the directive institutions of the modern world. They have been given governmental recognition in many States of the world; in the United States this basis of formulation policy was reflected in the N. R. A. and the A. A. A. Direct provision for formulating Nation-wide programs for certain single factors, indeed, is recognized in older Government

departments such as the Forest Service and the Interstate Commerce Commission. In any given area, again, the policy fixed for a single commodity on a Nationwide scale may have a very important—perhaps decisive-influence. A wheat-producing area will be conditioned in its planning by the wheat situation nationally and internationally; a steel town by the trends in the location of the industry generally; a port development not only by conditions in its own. hinterland but by developments in communications through the country as a whole. The adoption of a national policy by such a single interest might create problems of maladjustment locally which preliminary analysis in cooperation with the other interests concerned might have avoided or for which some compensatory program might have been developed.

To different types of political areas with which we are familiar and whose activity to be successful must be harmonized, we must add the commodity or functional areas and the organized interest groups related to them. While their policies may not be as sharply delineated and the nature of their organization may be more informal than those of the political units, there is nevertheless an increasing tendency within governments themselves to evolve development programs based upon these single factors. The danger of distortions and maladjustments which arise when the impact of such programs is felt by other interests which have not been consulted is reflected in many controversies. Here again the necessity for relating the various interests and their peculiar contributions to a national program as a whole and a comprehensive program for each locality is a fundamental one.

For example, the future development of the Lake States cut-over region will obviously involve far more than a forest policy in the narrower sense of the term. It involves preservation of wildlife for the encouragement of future recreational use; protection of headwaters of streams supplying water for domestic use, power, and recreation for more thickly settled areas to the south; it requires special policies of public finance that will encourage permanent selective cutting of timber as against the mining of timber; it requires a coordination of railroad and highway transportation facilities best adapted to land uses and the public financial resources of the region; it requires special coordination of the kinds of public services that need to be maintained in the area and the resources available for financing them; and it requires a program of continuous research and investigation in order that policies may be kept flexibly in touch with any new knowledge and new trends in population movements, agriculture, and markets. Thus both in the formulation of a program and in its ultimate application to the last detail, several

types of regions, many departments of government, and all the different levels of governments have to be considered and integrated by some responsible staff of officials.

4. Natural Resources Entail Regional Treatment

It may be well at this point to speak briefly of the types of governmental functions related to national development with which regional considerations are of particular importance on Federal programs. It is natural that at the beginning of such an inquiry attention should be centered chiefly on natural resources and environment. Problems of land and water use, for example, are so obviously related to spacial and surface factors that one is inclined to consider the regional aspects of regional development largely in the light of problems of soil erosion, forestry, land use, navigation, flood control, and the preservation of wildlife. This assumption is apt to be strengthened by the fact that the powers of the Federal Government with which one is at the outset concerned in a study of national development, are delegated and limited under the constitutional system. Much of its operations have arisen through its ownership of land and its power to control the development of navigable streams. The earlier work of the National Resources Board and its predecessor, the National Planning Board, would seem to strengthen still further this point of view that regional aspects of national development have chiefly to do with national resources. Thus the major reports on land utilization and land policy, water resources, mineral policy, and the Mississippi Valley all relate obviously to these fundamental and environmental factors.

But, as a member of the Board has pointed out:

We should guard against too narrow a view of the possibilities of natural resources development, attractive as they are. The economic crisis in the United States was not caused by erosion, serious as those inroads are in our soil assets; nor is unemployment due chiefly to lack of adequate flood control, calamitous as the consequences of floods are in many instances. It is too much to suppose that the proper development of our drainage basins will of itself solve the problems of the perplexed body politic. The problems centering around land and water cannot be solved in these terms alone, but require for their practical and successful treatment a full consideration of the broader but closely related aspects of agriculture, industry, labor, transporation and communication, health, education, public finance, and governmental organization.

Finally, human resources and human values are more significant than the land, water, and minerals on which men are dependent. The application of engineering and technological knowledge to the reorganization of the natural resources of the Nation is not an end in itself, but is to be conceived as a means of progressively decreasing the burdens imposed upon

labor, raising the standard of living, and enhancing the wellbeing of the masses of the people.'

This wider and more fundamental conception of national development, as a matter of fact, brings the natural resources factors into a relationship with the other powers of the Federal Government such as those relating to finance, credit, and interstate commerce. Thus the spending powers of the Federal Government either through a system of grants in aid, or the extension of credit resources or actual expenditure upon Federal public works will have a bearing and a decisive influence upon the developmental policy for a given area. A tariff policy may similarly affect, as we know from American history, the development of one region. The extension of credit to home owners or to municipalities or public corporations for housing purposes presupposes certain views as to future population trends not only in the particular city but to general regional developments as related to that city. Thus such powers which would seem on the surface to have but little regional significance, on closer examination may in their exercise be of the greatest importance. The struggle of different cities and regions throughout American history for transportation facilities whether by water or rail and implemented not only through Federal credit and public works but also favorable rate adjustments, is a tangible illustration of the fundamental sectionalism or regionalism which F. J. Turner has analyzed so acutely. Broadly speaking, Federal programs and policies tend to provide a general framework within which the policies of States and local governments are developed, and conversely the policies of the States and local governments are the necessary complement to Federal policies. Thus we may say that the natural resources or physical environmental problems are directly related to regions. The Federal Government by virtue of its powers through ownership or regulation relating to these resources has an obvious responsibility because these factors determine in the long run the location of human settlement, of industrial, commercial, and financial concentration, of lines of communication, and therefore problems peculiar to urban and metropolitan centers. While the development of cities may be peculiarly a problem within the scope of the powers of the States, the larger strategy of the development of natural resources in which both the National and State Governments share has a fundamental relation to them.

This flexible and evolving approach to policies of national development is reflected in the recent organization by the National Resources Committee not only of

C. E. Merriam, Planning Agencies in America, the American Political Science Review, April 1935, p. 201.

its sections on land, water, and minerals, but also in its technical committees on industrial development and transportation and in its approach to the problems of urbanism and regionalism. It is perhaps even more strikingly indicated by the fact that the Board has turned to such agencies as the National Council on Education, the Social Science Research Council, and the National Academy of Sciences for the establishment of consultative committees. In the establishment of the technical committees on land, water, minerals, power, industries, and transportation there is evidence of the deliberate effort to bring together representatives of the various agencies of the Federal Government with major program and policy responsibilities in these representative fields. It is significant that in the final recommendations to the President-those contained in part VII-of the report of the Board of December 1, 1934, the conception of the necessary staff work of coordination is set forth.

1. That an advisory National Planning Board be set up consisting of five members appointed by the President of the United States, to serve as a general staff of the Chief Executive. 2. That the functions of the Board should be advisory and not executive and should include

(a) Coordination of planning policies within the Federal Government.

(b) Coordination of planning policies between Federal, State, and local jurisdictions.

(c) Stimulation and assistance to the planning agencies within the Federal Government and in regions, States, and localities.

(d) Fundamental research directed toward the development of basic national policies and programs.

3. That the staff of the Board under a director be organized as a secretariat responsible for keeping in touch with planning agencies in departments and bureaus and serving as a liaison or agency with coordinating committees and special committees concerned with various aspects of national planning.

4. That continuing advisory committees, including representatives of Federal agencies primarily concerned, be set up dealing with long-time public works planning, land use, water resources, mineral policy, and mapping.*

5. Decentralization of Powers and Responsibilities

Due to the World War, the problems of post-war readjustment and the world-wide depression there has developed in all national governments a greater extension of governmental functions and a concentration of governmental authority. During the war, the necessity for increasing man power and production with the withdrawal of millions from ordinary employments to the armed forces made a careful husbanding of material and human resources essential. In the post-war turmoil, in many parts of the world political movements have consolidated their rule in attempting to

National Resources Board, Report, p. 6.

deal with the conditions which called these movements into existence. But over a much greater period of time, the increasing ease, speed and cheapness of communication in the widest use of the term have caused a relative shrinkage in the earth's surface in terms of the amount of time required to travel, to communicate, to transport power or goods. There is in consequence a massing of decisions to be taken at the center of the modern state unparalleled in history. Each of these decisions is registered more swiftly throughout the institutions and local communities of the Nation.

a. A Federal System Dependent upon Cooperation

In the United States this tendency to emphasize a Nation-wide attack upon problems arising out of a large-scale interdependent economic system has been balanced by the requirements of the Federal constitutional structure and the lines of political leadership with which it is interwoven. Thus it is possible to relieve through the States the pressure and concentration upon the political and administrative authorities in the National Government. It is possible to develop a wider recruiting of civic leadership and a broader base of operations. But such results are obtainable only if there is a deliberate and conscious effort made by both the National and the State Governments to work in cooperation in this attack upon problems whose solution requires the exercise of constitutional powers distributed among them. From this arises the problem of and the basic argument for a careful preparation of national programs of development through preliminary field explorations of the way in which policies affecting a given area may be unified, priorities established whereby both State and National departments proceed in their daily operations, and adequate and economical means of operation and financing be devised. From this point of view the establishment of such a procedure for preparing national developmental policies relegates the controversy over "State rights" to the background. The National Government in this way facilitates the States in the exercise of their powers and supplements them by insuring their effectiveness so far as the national policy is concerned. There is, indeed, no other way for solving most of our problems of government, since the powers of both levels of government are required in most matters. That such a conception of planning procedure is not fanciful is evident from the cooperative action of the National Government and the States in the planning procedure outlined by the National Resources Board and now followed by the National Resources Committee. Far from suppressing State initiative, the work of State planning has been stimulated, as the State reports testify. Similarly, the new social security program envisages a stimultion of State action in collaboration with