REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE. 69 



vTith one more, to maintain organized systems of protection. There 

 v/as spent last year on this work nearly $400,000 from the National 

 Treasury and about $2,000,000 of State and contributed private 

 funds. Twelve States having considerable forest areas, however, 

 do not maintain protective organizations, and of those which do 

 a number can give protection to only a part of their forest area for 

 lack of adequate funds. It is estimated that the annual cost of 

 adequately protecting all our forest lands, exclusive of the national 

 forests, would approximate $9,250,000. 



PROMOTION or FOREST PLANTING NECESSARY. 



With fires kept out, many of our cut-over forests will restock 

 themselves with valuable trees. But where devastation has been 

 severe (usually through repeated fires), tree planting is essential. 

 Various States now maintain tree nurseries and sell trees at or some- 

 times below the cost of growing and shipping them. Forest plant- 

 ing on a commercial scale is not possible without cheap plants and 

 the present demand for small trees is far in excess of the capacity 

 of the State nurseries to supply them. This form of public assistance 

 to the private timber grower should be largely extended. 



THE TAXATION PROBLEM. 



Present methods of taxation discourage the growing of timber. 

 The problem of adjusting taxation to the use of land for producing a 

 crop which matures only after many years, growing more and more 

 valuable from an assessment standpoint yet yielding the owner 

 no current income from which to pay carrying charges, is a very 

 knotty one; for the cost of local government must somehow be met 

 each year. 



The capital invested in timber production should bear a tax 

 burden neither less nor greater than that imposed on capital invested 

 in other productive enterprises; but the owner of forest lands can 

 not fairly be called upon to pay a yearly tax on his investment plus 

 a steadily enhancing yearly levy — forty or fifty times — on a single 

 crop. A solution would seem to be either in taxing the land only at 

 its full value for timber production, or in taxing the timber crop 

 at the time of harvesting it, or possibly in some combination of these 

 two principles. 



