REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE. 59 



livestock industry. There was a surplus of $200,000 in income 

 over the regular expenditures for protection and administration, 

 excluding construction and maintenance of improvements, other 

 development work such as timber surveys and tree planting, and 

 emergency expenditures in fire fighting. If the deferred payments 

 of grazing fees allowed during the last three years are credited to 

 the years in which they fell due instead of the years in which final 

 settlement of these open accounts was made, there is shown an actual 

 increase in revenue-producing business last year over the fiscal year 

 1922 of more than $1,000,000, and over 1920, the year in which 

 receipts were previously at their highest, of more than $540,000. 



Not only were receipts from the sale of timber 33 per cent greater 

 than in the best former year, with a total of $2,721,876.20, but such 

 progi-ess was made in laying out new operating units and preparing 

 for the increased demand for national forest timber, due to the 

 westward movement of the lumber industry and growth in western 

 consumption, as practically to assure a steady increase in future 

 business. At the same time, each new unit where operations are 

 begun is being kept on a perpetual-yield basis. 



Fires on the national forests, during a year of more than average 

 hazard, were held down for the third year in succession to a point 

 where only a little more than two-tenths of 1 per cent of the total 

 area was burned over and the loss caused was less than one-tenth of 1 

 per cent of the total value of the destructible resources protected. 



The grazing regulations were worked over to make the system of 

 regulated range use one which will contribute most to the stability 

 of the livestock industry dependent on the forests while maintain- 

 ing the full authority of the Government to control this use as the 

 public interests may require. 



The establishment of two new forest experiment stations gives 

 larger opportunity for the research fundamental to the development 

 of the best forestry practice, both public and private. 



Economic investigations brought into clearer relief the character 

 and extent of the public burden imposed by devastated and idle 

 forest lands, the relation between timber requirements and our pos- 

 sible timber production, and the future relative need for the agri- 

 cultural use of land as against forest use. 



