104 FOREST commissioner's report. 



birch bears to the other species. In places a good deal of fir 

 and spruce is springing up. The latter seldom makes any great 

 showing on the ground at present, but given sufficient time it 

 may be counted on to regain a fraction of its old standing in 

 the cover of the land. 



we^thin^k" Here is one way to treat timberland, and much 

 ^^^^^ as it has been clamored asfainst, there is somethins* 



to be said for it. At any rate the men who lumber in this 

 way are not to be indiscriminately howled at. They are 

 keen business men, endeavoring through the purchase of 

 land and the cutting and marketing of its timber, to build up 

 a fortune for themselves and their heirs. Every stick of 

 timber standing on their land that can be cut and marketed 

 at a profit, they cut and sell, and invest the proceeds in more 

 land and a bigger operation. And as business men of the 

 sharpest kind, taking into account, too, the facts of growth 

 and the future of the market so far as they are known or can 

 be judged, there is little doubt that their decision is finan- 

 cially sound. If they were mill men primarily, with a big 

 capital invested in plant and a vital interest in its perma- 

 nent supply, they would look at the matter differently. Were 

 they investors of money looking for a moderate assured return 

 on capital invested, their cut would doubtless have much more 

 reference to the steady output of spruce from their land. If 

 they were not logging l)y rail, but driveable streams kept an 

 outlet for logs continually open without expense, even that 

 might determine them to leave the youno- timber to otow, 

 with the purpose of cutting over the land again in twenty or 

 thirty years. Neither of these things is the case, however, 

 and as things stand, their judgment is not at fault. Every 

 dollar that they can make will bring in more invested in their 

 business than the growth of timberland will pay. They do 

 what every other business man would do in the same circum- 

 stances if he were as strong in his purposes and as sharp in 



*Perhapsthe reader wouclers wliat that "boinething" is. It lies just here — in the 

 complete utilization of the original stand of timber. There are here none of 

 those great wastes through slack methods, blowdown of timber left, etc., that 

 were so often noted in our earlier study. 



