G42 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



opportunity, both in the past generally refused by the soil surveyors 

 because of the reasons mentioned and also, of course, because the bulk 

 of their work has properly been concentrated within areas of unques- 

 tioned high agricultural importance. 



The last few years and months have brought this entire subject into 

 unexpected prominence. It was bound in any case to appear directly, 

 but late developments have greatly hurried things along. There is the 

 "Lane Scheme"'*- for the settlement of returned soldiers, for instance, 

 under which agents have solicited the listing with the Reclamation 

 Service of cut-over agricultural lands, under forms which amount 

 almost to options of purchase. There is Federal tax legislation, which 

 is placing the owners of great cut-over areas in a dilemma of far-reach- 

 ing importance, in effect threatening to tax away any unearned incre- 

 ment from their cut-over lands, as well as threatening their standing 

 timber." There is the radical State legislation looking toward the 

 breaking up of large estates.** There is the promise that the new 

 census will attempt a really adequate inventory of the standing timber 

 and cut-over lands of the nation, "thus aiding the development of a 

 permanent national forest policy and the solution of sundry forest prob- 

 lems," among the greatest of which will be, of course, the waste-land 

 problem.*^ There is the rapidly growing interest on the part of farmers 

 in the matter of cost accounting, much of which is very likely to prove 

 parallel to the discoveries of the Bureau of Farm Management, already 

 cited.*"' There is the war-stimulated feeling that non-productive re- 

 sources are not permissible, recognition that great territories once 

 forested are now nearing economic bankruptcy, and the certainty that 

 timber supplies are even shorter than supposed.*" 



This new interest in the status of land is not local or typical alone of 

 America, but seems to be common to most of the civilized countries.** 

 It would seem obvious that there is soon to open something approach- 

 ing a new era in our land history. 



" Report of the Secretary of the Interior. 1918. 



^^ Compton, American Lumberman, November 16, 1918, p. 28. 



'''Lumber Trade Journal, September i. 1918, p. 41; Cut-Over Lands. December, 

 1918, p. 4; and January, 1919, p. 16. 



'^American Lumberman, November 30, 1918. 



'*See, for instance, U. S. D. A. Bulletin 41, 1914; Roth, "Forest Valuation," 

 1916, p. 132. . r ■ , 



" The secretary of the Southern Pine Association states that "inside of eight 

 vears, at least three thousand sawmills in the South will be cut out, the annual 

 production dropping from over 8 to 3-5 billion feet." (Rhodes, Lumber Trade 

 Journal, Januarv 15, 1919, p. 19-) 



''Hearings on the "Grosser Bill," H. R. 11329, 1916. 



