208 Report of Farmers' Institutes 



the state. I say no longer because I am looking at the whole 

 question of forestry in New York with the startling facts in 

 view that the state of New York has a debt equal to $47.00 per 

 acre for every acre of land, good and bad ; that last year the legis- 

 lature levied a direct tax of $18,000,000; that the joint Legisla- 

 tive Committee on Taxation has just reported that the cost of 

 state government in New York, between 1910 and 1914, in- 

 creased 40 per cent, and they report that there is every indication 

 that it will be necessary to impose each year during the next five 

 years a direct state tax of from $14,500,000 to $19,000,000. 

 This tax, it is claimed, will be necessary even if the state suc- 

 ceeds in stopping further increases in cost of government, holding 

 its present expenses to the present amount. 



I am also considering this question of the use of our wood- 

 lands in the light of the experience of the older countries where 

 in several instances the forest soils of the province or state give a 

 considerable part of the income to the state in which they are 

 located. In referring to the income from our agricultural lands, 

 I assumed that the annual return per acre per year in New York 

 is from $4.00 to $6.00. This is not large when one considers the 

 returns which are secured from the German forests. In the 

 Black Forest of Southwestern Germany, a region very much like 

 our Adirondacks, a return of from $2.00 to $4.00 per acre per 

 year is being secured. In one section near Baden I was amazed 

 to find owners of tenant fanns turning their tenants away from 

 the farm, tearing down the farm buildings and planting Norway 

 Spruce. In little Saxony as high as $6.00 per acre per year is 

 being received from forest lands. True, economic conditions over 

 there are quite difi^erent from ours; yet in the expense of our 

 government per capita our economic conditions are not so differ- 

 ent. If we are to be relieved from our increasingly heavy state 

 debt and direct taxation, we must consider sensibly and with 

 vision every phase of the full use of the soils of our great state. 



You people who are interested especially in agriculture have 

 300 years of practice, good and bad, back of you in this countiy. 

 Those of us who are working in forestry have but a decade or two, 

 and this not so much in practice as in determined efforts in the 

 education of the people. After this long agricultural history. New 



