HARDWOOD RECORD 



53 



In the autumn of 1907 the whole subject 

 was brought into the field of general public 

 thought by the International Tax Association 

 at its first conference held at Columbus, 

 Ohio, when forest taxation was given a sepa- 

 rate place among the topics for consideration. 

 At the second meeting of the association, 

 held at Toronto, Canada, one year later, a 

 scientific and just method of forest taxation 

 was first well presented, and the principles 

 tlien laid down have, with some variation, 

 been since embodied in laws proposed in sev- 

 eral of the state legislatures. 



Tlie principles rccommpuded liy tlie Forest 

 Service can not be generally adopted without 

 amendment to the constitution of a great 

 many of the states, but it seems as if the 

 growing public interest in this whole subject 

 will compel such amendments and thus open 

 the way for a system of forest taxation which 

 will be just and which will encourage the 

 holding of cut-over lands for reforestation 

 and another crop. Indeed, in two of the 

 states, Minnesota and Oregon, steps have al- 

 ready been taken to this end, for in each of 

 these states a constitutional amendment has 

 been submitted to the legislature which will 

 permit the taxation of timberlauds according 

 to approved principles. 



These state forests represent a line of 

 state action which has been preeminently 

 successful. A total of 3,279,771 acres of 

 forest reserves is owned by the states in- 

 cluding Hawaii. New York leads the states 

 in state forest area, followed by Pennsyl- 

 vania and Wisconsin. The smaller attempts 

 of Minnesota, Michigan, Connecticut, Massa- 

 chusetts, Xew .lersey, Indiana, etc., are all 

 important. The state forests speak for 

 themselves. First, they furnish object les- 

 sons of great value ; second, they form the 

 nucleus of what some day must be the prin- 

 cipal center of state forest work. It is a 

 fundamentally sound policy for the state to 

 own land, especially land which does not 

 offer the conditions necessary for prosperous 

 settlement. 



Private Forestry 

 The Ikducement to Practice Fokestky 



Three-fourths of all our forests are in 

 I'livate hands. These private forests are, 

 moreover, the best stocked ; they contain 

 four-fifths of all the timber iu the country. 

 Clearly the bulk of the timber cut must 

 come, for some time at least, from this area. 

 Upon the use of the forest growing upon it 

 will depend whether future demands for tim- 

 ber will be met or not. Very largely, there- 

 fore, the forest problem is to be solved by 

 private forestry — unless, indeed, private 

 owners fail to practice it on any considerable 

 scale, in which case public ownership may 

 be invoked iu the public interest. It is of 

 the greatest importance, then, to know the 

 extent to which forestry is now, and is likely 

 to be, practiced on private lands. 



The area of private forest on which for- 

 estry is practiced at present is not known 

 and can onlv be roughlv estimated, Probablv 



it is less than 1 jier cent of the total area of 

 private forests. As was said in describing 

 the cooperative work of the Forest Service, 

 about 10,000,000 acres have been involved in 

 the applications made to the Service for ad- 

 vice in projier forest management. Actual 

 work in accordance with Service advice has 

 been done on a substantial part of the area. 

 In but few cases, however, have complete 

 working plans been persistently carried out. 

 The chief value of this work has been its 

 educational effect, which extends far beyond 

 the forests directly concerned, A valuable 

 result thus secured is the better general 

 knowledge of the meaniug and aims of for- 

 estry. Forestry is now correctly understood 

 to mean no mere sentimental plea for re- 

 garding the forest as an ornament to the 

 landscape, but a practical plan for getting 

 the best economic service out of the forest 

 in the long run. This is a great advance. 

 With forestry rightly understood, it is a 

 comparatively simple matter to work out the 

 results which the practice of forestry may bo 

 expected to secure. 



It is, of course, both useless and unfair to 

 invite forest owners to practice forestry sim- 

 ply for pleasure. In dealing with jiublic 

 forests the first consideration is the public 

 welfare; in dealing with private forests the 

 first consideration is the business induce- 

 ment. Forests in private hands are realty 

 investments made for the interest they will 

 produce. Their owners are chiefly concerned 

 with knowing what will happen to the in- 

 vestment, how its interest-yielding power will 

 be affected under the conservative manage- 

 ment wliieh the forester recommends. If 

 forestry is not good business, then good 

 business men, such as most forest owners 

 unquestionably are, are precisely the sort of 

 men not to touch it. 



In the past almost the exclusive induce- 

 ment to invest in . forest property has been 

 the chances it offered for clearing up and 

 closing out at a satisfactory profit — a quick 

 and remunerative turnover of capital. This 

 sort of investment has been, and to a greatly 

 limited extent still is, highly profitable. It 

 is distinctive of the lumber industry. It 

 will continue to characterize transactions in 

 timber land as long as it pays better to skin 

 the land and move on than it does to develop 

 the land and hold on. It has become a 

 business habit, which fact makes it all the 

 harder to change. In order, however, for 

 forestry to come into general practice, a 

 change will have to come. 



Speculative deals in forest property, buy- 

 ing in cheap in order to sell out at an ad- 

 vance, can go on only as long as it remains 

 comparatively easy to get in and out of the 

 market quickly; that is, only as long as first- 

 class stumpage can be readily picked up. 

 Cheap virgin forest is getting scarce, and 

 stumpage prices, which so long have lagged 

 behind lumber prices, are rising sharply. 

 The opportunities for forest speculation in 

 the old style are fewer every day. 



Realizing this situation better than any- 

 body else, lumbermen and others owning and 

 dealing in forest lands are beginning to ask 

 whether it is not time to handle forest prop- 

 erties in a dift'ercnt way — to hold them and 

 put them on a permanent paying basis by 

 utilizing the productive power of the forest, 

 together with the advance in stumpage 

 values; in short, whether forestry will not 

 pay better than exploitation. 



A satisfactory answer to the question 

 "Will forestry pay?" can not be made off- 

 hand. The problem is not one of theory, but 

 oue of conditions; the considerations in- 

 volved are not absolute, but relative. The 

 point to decide is not whether forests in 

 general and anywhere can, by intensive for- 

 estry, be made to yield net profits inilefinitely, 

 but whether private forests in the United 

 States, at pi-esent and prospective market 

 prices for stumpage and forest products, in 

 the present state of the lumber industry, 

 under existing laws, and with the prevailing 

 public sentiment toward the forest, can, un- 

 der more conservative management, be made 

 to yield an interest rate satisfactory to in- 

 vestors as compared with the profits of forest 

 devastation. The lumberman and the forest 

 owner are facing a real situation of concrete 

 facts, and the forester 's answer to their 

 question must be no less concrete. 



Obstacles to Private Forestry 

 Getting right down to the situation as it 

 comes home to the forest owner and the lum- 

 berman, it is easy to see that there are cer- 

 tain obstacles in the way which must be over- 

 come before it is reasonable to expect that 

 private forestry will be widely practiced. 

 The chief of these are the following: 



the gre.\t fire risk 

 AVhile the private owner should unques- 

 tionably be required to contribute toward 

 the protection of his own holdings from fire, 

 he can hardly be expected to assume the 

 whole expense in a country where the gen- 

 eral sentiment toward fires is indifferent. 

 The most effective fire protection anywhere 

 outside of the State and National forests is 

 secured now in the states of Oregon, Wash- 

 ington, and Idaho by cooperative fire asso- 

 ciations which assess their members on an 

 acreage basis and maintain a patrol. During 

 the past year such associations cooperated 

 successfully with the protective force main- 

 tained by the National Government and the 

 states. Investigations show that patrol can 

 accomplish full protection to forest land at 

 an annual cost of from 2 to 4 cents per acre 

 throughout the United States, according to 

 the regional fire risk. The total annual cost 

 of protecting all private forests is estimated 

 at $10,000,000. The annual fire losses in 

 standing timber alone are placed at $50,- 

 000,000. 



ILL-DEVISED TAXATION 



In a real sense, forests are in many cases 

 simply taxed out of existence. As long as 

 forests continue to be taxed on the basis of 



