Multnomah County OR Archives Biographies.....Mason, David T. 1883 - ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/or/orfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Ila Wakley iwakley@msn.com February 14, 2011, 3:41 pm Source: History of the Columbia River Valley From The Dalles to the Sea, Vol. III, Published 1928, Pages 945 - 946 Author: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company DAVID T. MASON. Among Portland's distinguished men is numbered David T. Mason, who is nationally known as a forest engineer and has made notable contribution to the world's work. He was born in 1883, in Newark, New Jersey, and is a son of William B. R. and Rachel Manning (Townsend) Mason. His father is one of the pioneer journalists of that state and for fifty years has been the owner and publisher of the Bound Brook Chronicle. David T. Mason received the degree of Civil Engineer from Rutgers University in 1905 and in 1907 was graduated from the Yale Forestry School. From 1907 until 1915 he was identified with the forestry department of the United States government and was sent to Colorado and other parts of the west, also spending some time in Washington, D. C. In 1915 he became professor of forestry at the University of California and filled that chair until 1921. His duties were interrupted by the World war and for two years he was with the forest engineers of the United States Army. He rose to the rank of major and was stationed in France for a year. While connected with the University of California he organized the timber section of the bureau of internal revenue to place a valuation on the timber owned by American taxpayers in the United States and in foreign countries. He had charge of this department, which made a survey of timber valued in excess of seven billion dollars. In 1921 Mr. Mason came to Portland, opening an office as a forest engineer, and in the intervening period of six years has appraised over fifty timber properties, averaging more than one billion feet each. His fertile brain evolved the plan of sustained yield forest management, described as follows in the summary of his contribution to the Journal of Forestry in October, 1927: "Sustained yield forest management consists for a given forest in limiting the average annual cut to the continuous production capacity. Such regulation of cutting is most advantageously applied to a unit of forest area sufficiently large to supply continuously an efficient sized plant operating at or near capacity converting the forest products into salable material. The sustained yield management unit should be regarded as including not only the forest land involved but also the logging development, the mills for conversion and the community economically dependent upon the enterprise." In this treatise Mr. Mason also says: "The most important American forest problems may be stated as: first — the timber supply problem, or the problem of meeting continuously the requirements of the American people for supplies of forest products; second — the community problem, or the problem of keeping forest soils regularly engaged in the work of growing trees so that dependent communities may have maximum permanent prosperity; third — industrial prosperity, or the problem of stabilizing timber ownership and operation in such fashion as to bring prosperity to timber owners and operators. "At present we are taking annually from the forests of the United States about thirty billion feet of softwood lumber and about seven million, two hundred and fifty million feet for uses other than lumber; in addition fire, insects and disease are destroying five billion, seven hundred and fifty million feet. This is a gross depletion of about forty-three billion feet of softwood. The annual growth of soft wood is placed at about six billion feet, leaving a net annual depletion of about thirty-seven billion feet. At this rate of net depletion our remaining stand of softwood timber, estimated at one trillion, three hundred and forty-nine million feet, would last about thirty- seven years. The production of softwood east of the Rocky mountains is declining at the rate of about seven hundred million feet yearly; this will continue. In the Rocky mountain states production will not change greatly. In the Pacific coast states total production is increasing at the rate of about seven hundred million feet year; this will continue. "The United States imports of softwood, or its equivalent, exceed the annual exports by about two billion feet. The world situation is such that the United States cannot expect to meet its future needs by greatly increased imports. Our future requirements will probably continue indefinitely to be very large, and they can be met only by growing within the United States nearly all that is required. "If we are to come anywhere near meeting our future softwood requirements, we must start production. General economic conditions, including state and federal policy, have never been of such a nature as to stimulate effectively the growing of large quantities of softwood timber on private lands, from which nearly all of our present supply comes. Reasonable changes in government policy, together with the earnest study of possibilities by the principal private timber land owners will result in the wide introduction of sustained yield forest management, which will solve the problem of American timber supply, the problem of communities dependent upon the forest industries, and will bring prosperity to the forest industries." At the commercial forestry conference, arranged by the Chamber of Commerce of the United States at Chicago, November 16 and 17, 1927, Mr. Mason presented a paper entitled the "Importance and Possibilities of Sustained Yield Forest Management," and this also attracted national attention. In this paper he shows that the broad application of sustained yield forest management upon those properties where it is or can be made economically practicable, will simultaneously: first — erroneously promote the practice of forestry, thereby doing the utmost to solve the timber supply problem; second — make permanent many communities, villages, cities, railways, etc., which otherwise with a continued migratory industry would either pass away entirely or shrink greatly in size or prosperity; and third — put the lumber industry especially on a stable and continuously profitable basis. Mr. Mason and his associate, Carl U. Stevens, have introduced the theory of selective cutting of timber, which results in the greatest financial returns. They were also the originators of the general forest industries questionnaire, which has been adopted by the timber section of the treasury department. This questionnaire has been prepared to apply to the thousands of typical lumber manufacturing concerns owning timber lands from which timber is being cut to be sawed into lumber in the manufacturing plant of the same concern, and greatly facilitates the work of the commissioner of internal revenue. The firm of Mason & Stevens specializes in all kinds of unusual economic problems and has over fifty corporations as clients. This is the only private consulting firm of the kind in the western part of the United States and its business is drawn from many sections of this country, also extending to British Columbia, Alaska and New Zealand. At Missoula, Montana, Mr. Mason was married in 1911 to Miss Evelyn Polleys, a daughter of E. H. Polleys, a prominent lumberman of that city, and they have become the parents of one child, Georgia. Mr. Mason belongs to the Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi fraternities, the Cosmos Club of Washington, D. C., the Portland Golf Club and the University Club. In politics he is a republican and manifests a deep interest in movements for Portland's advancement. Mr. Mason stands at the top of his profession and in his tireless efforts to conserve the great timber resources of the United States he has rendered to the nation a service of inestimable value. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/or/multnomah/bios/mason1504gbs.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/orfiles/ File size: 8.4 Kb