A LESSON IN FOREST ECONOMY 



253 



12. "The legal obligation upon the 

 owner of property — an obligation that 

 is universal and should be enforced — 

 so to use it as to do no damage to an- 

 other's property and to do no public 

 injury does not include an additional 

 obligation to make a specific positive 

 use of it which, although intended to 

 benefit the public at large, involves 

 a loss to the individual himself. 



13. "If the public is interested in 

 any use of timberlands or of cut-over 

 lands different from that which the 

 enlightened self-interest of the owner 

 may dictate, the public which is the 

 beneficiary should pay the additional 

 cost. 



14. "The maintenance in idleness of 

 cut-over land is declared to be waste- 

 ful. The larger truth would seem to 

 be that it is wasteful to maintain cut- 

 over land in such state of idleness as 

 does not furnish safeguard against 

 fire and ravage which destroys the 

 natural reproduction of desirable 

 species." 



7. With the harvest of virgin stands 

 stumpage prices (and the cost of the 

 wood products) increase until they 

 attain the cost of producing timber 

 under forest management. Even after 

 all the timber of a nation is being 

 grown as a crop prices of material of 

 the same quality tend to increase with 

 the intensity of civilization. 



8. In great land states (such as many 

 of the United States) the business of 

 forestry with its related industries will, 

 next to agriculture, be the chief source 

 of prosperity. The value of forest 

 land generally decreases after forest 

 destruction and increases according to 

 the amount of net revenue earned by 

 forest production, subject to the de- 

 velopment of the use of land for other 

 purposes. 



9. As a new country with vast tim- 

 ber resources developes industrially 

 the per capita consumption may show 

 a decline as a result of the use of 

 other materials for construction ; there 

 is, however, a certain limit beyond 

 which consumption can not fall with- 

 out serious economic handicaps. The 

 tendency of modern commercial prog- 

 ress is to create new uses for woods 

 which overbalance substitution and 

 other factors checking consumption. 

 Similarly, with more intensive settle- 

 ment forests for recreation uses be- 

 come more and more essential to 

 national efficiency and wealth. 



10. The milder the climate (in the 

 temperate zone) the more rapid is 

 forest production, and consequently 

 the shorter is the time required to 

 grow crops on soils of similar ca- 

 pacity. Therefore, large areas in the 

 United States are admirably adapted 

 to forest production. 



11. No nation has learned and taken 

 to heart the benefits of forestry with- 

 out first experiencing disaster from 

 economic shortage, floods, erosion, 

 over-grazing, and other adverse results 

 of forest devastation. 



The conclusion is inevitable that the 

 public is the ideal long-term forest 

 owner because it can take a part of 

 its profits in indirect benefits; there- 

 fore, a very much larger proportion 



