THE CUT-OVER LAND PROBLEM 499 



enonnous value, if appropriate measures of forest management are 

 applied. The growth of ten to fifty years is there; the land is low 

 priced ; and a comparatively inexpensive system of drainage (lowering 

 the water level) will in the majority of cases increase the growth by 

 several hundred per cent. 



There is one big handicap to sustained management of forests — Fed- 

 eral as well as State — and that is the dependence for maintenance on 

 annual or biennial legislative appropriations. This usually becomes a 

 factor only when forests are under intensive management. Funds for 

 planting, fire protection or improvement may be provided from time to 

 time for a period of years, and then, through failure to continue funds, 

 all prior expenditures may be lost by enforced abandonment of projects 

 or by fire. The money necessary to carry a forest unit or several of 

 them to the end of a rotation, or for a period of fifty to seventy-five 

 years, can be determined with reasonable accuracy, and yet each year or 

 each biennium the same question comes before the legislative body, 

 with the same figures of area, growth, costs, etc. Different bodies of 

 men in the legislature have to be convinced time and again during the 

 crop rotation of the wisdom of the plans. So it goes in each State and 

 in Congress. Nothing is settled for more than one or two years ahead. 

 A study of this phase of the question in the light of the experience of 

 various Federal and State administrative bureaus would show some 

 distressingly big figures on waste. 



The expense of maintaining forest units should be met out of a 

 continuing tax levy, so that the legislative body would need to act 

 only once in authorizing the levy. Subsequently the legislature would 

 only need to check up on the expenditures. Foresters would do well to 

 work for the elimination of this handicap to stable forest management. 



The course of action to bring suitable areas of young growth under 

 management would involve legislation (1) authorizing the selection 

 and designation of these areas, (2) assigning land to a separate tax list 

 for taxation under a prescribed method, and (3) providing the financial 

 plan. 



There should be some limitation on the total acreage to be desig- 

 nated and an approximate ratio of hardwood to coniferous acreage. 

 The minimum unit should be low, so that areas as small as ten acres 

 might come into the plan. 



The method of taxing the land yearly on a nominal valuation and 

 placing a yield tax on timber when cut should be applied. The owner 



