EDITORIAL COMMENT 



Lumbermen's View on the Permanency of Our Forests 



The American Lumhcrman for January 12, 1918, prints a statement 

 which is said to embody the views of representatives of the lumber 

 industry regarding the appHcation of the "excess-profits" tax to that 

 industry. The gist of the argument is that any increase in stumpage 

 vahie should be regarded as an "earned surplus," and that the present 

 stumpage value of any given tract of timber should be regarded as 

 "invested capital," irrespective of the original purchase price. In at- 

 tempting to substantiate this argument certain statements are made 

 which, if really representative of the views of the lumber industry as a 

 whole, are extremely significant. 



After all that has been said and written during the past twenty-five 

 years in regard to forestry and forest conserv-ation, it is both surpris- 

 ing and discouraging to be informed by the chief users of the forest 

 that "timber differs from other natural resources, such, for example, 

 as coal and oil, in that the available supply is the total supply. The 

 amount of it is a known quantity, and that quantity is being steadily 

 depleted with not the slightest possibility of an increased supply from 

 the development of new fields, as with oil. . . . The value of timber 

 is ever upward because the demand always exceeds the supph — be- 

 cause the demand is always increasing, the supply always decreasing. 

 This is the history of whitc-pinc tinil)er. It is the history of vellow- 

 pine timber, and will be the history of all timber until the supply is 

 exhausted. . . . But these (stocks and bonds, wheat, cotton, and 

 other agricultural products, lumber, brick, and ordinary market com- 

 modities) are products of a month or a year or are crops grown this 

 year and to be grown again next year, some subject to the control of 

 man and others to the whims of nature, responsive to speculative influ- 

 i-nce, fluctuating and independable in supply and dependent upon an 

 uncertain and variable demand. Timber, on the other hand, is a ma- 

 tured crop, grown but once and to be harvested but once, determinable 

 in quantity, diminishing in supply, and subject to a world demand 

 which renders it possible to estimate with reasona])Ie accuracy the time 

 when the supply will be practicallv cxliausted." 



ft must be admitted that many Innilicnncti in this i'(>nntr\ have done 



