REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS OK FISHERIES, GAME AXD FORESTS. 329 



tion that will increase their gains or make their revenues more permanent. But they 

 are slow to listen when their advisers are men whose experience in forestry is confined 

 to operations with pen and ink, to mere observation, or, at the best, to work in the 

 forests of far-off lands where the conditions are entirely different. At the same time 

 they agree readily with the doctrinaires that the true test of forestry is the balance 

 sheet, and point complacently to their profits. Their margins are small, but wealth 

 soon accrues through the magnitude of their operations. These small margins are 

 obtainable only by adhering carefully to methods of work which are based on a 

 century of experience in American forests. And yet they are constantly receiving 

 explanations as to how they should conduct their business from men who never saw 

 a log cut or skidded, who could not even make a respectable guess as to the stumpage 

 value of any species, or the cost of putting the logs on the river bank. 



All this criticism is due to the superior results obtained in the forests of other 

 countries, especially those of Germany. There the forests, through skillful manage- 

 ment, yield not only an annual but a perpetual revenue ; and, without any diminution 

 of area. Each acre is not cut annually, but a large tract will furnish yearly a total 

 product equivalent to a good showing per acre on the total average. The Saxon 

 forests furnish a permanent annual product of $4.11 per acre on the average. The 

 Swiss canton of Zurich has a forest that yields annually a sum equal to $4.40 per 

 acre. Fourteen forest administrations in Germany containing 10,000,000 acres yield 

 $3.15 per acre, or a total revenue of $31,500,000 annually.* 



It is natural that such results should attract the attention of people in our country 

 who are interested in forestry matters, and that they should urge the adoption of 

 similar methods here in hope of like results. But, can it be done here while the 

 conditions are so different ? 



In these foreign countries the owner of woodlands has the advantage of cheap 

 labor and a good market. W'ith us these conditions are reversed. Then, again, the 

 profitable management of European forests depends largely on the sale of fuel, a very 

 large per cent, of the income being derived from that source or by the sale of mate- 

 rial obtained from thinnings and improvement cuttings. Every small limb and fagot 

 is bundled up and sold. If the American lumberman could sell his waste timber — 

 tops and limbs — for firewood, or could find a sale for the material cut in thinning out 

 his forest, and could employ cheap labor, he could manage his property on similar 

 lines. But in our forests the limbs and tops, which elsewhere are converted into cash, 

 go to waste, and must be left to rot wherever they fall. If the American forester 

 would improve his woodlands by thinning or pruning, he must undergo that expense 



* B. E. Fernow ; Bulletin No. 5, 1891: United States Department of Agriculture. 



