40 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



practiced unless stumpage prices are high enough to raise timber to 

 maturity on a bare tract at a profit above all costs including compound 

 interest. It is folly, if not absolutely wrong, to expect stumpage to 

 bring cost of production unless this cost is taken for what it really is — 

 the cost of taking over the virgin forest. It is better to have timber 

 cut and put into houses at low cost than to rot in the woods waiting for 

 higher prices. The cut timber will actually last longer in .the house 

 in many cases and while it is decaying there another tree will grow to 

 maturity in the woods and be ready to take its place in a future house. 



To justify this procedure our finance must be that of the continuous 

 producing forest beginning with the vast stands we now have. The 

 finance of the bare tract forestry is of little immediate interest or prac- 

 tical importance except for the purpose of weighing different methods 

 of silviculture. 



There seems, at first glance, an alternative policy to forestry open 

 to the lumberman, namely: cut the mature timber at once and cash 

 it in. This, however, government investigations show to be absolutely 

 impossible. Why? Because these private holdings are of such size 

 that they cannot be completely cashed in inside of 50 or 60 years, 

 so far as we can see now. Since this rate of cutting is little, if any, 

 greater than the forest will sustain forever, if properly handled, 1;Jie 

 only sound national policy for the mass of private owners is forest 

 management. Without it, we see 2,200 billions of timber seeking 

 immediately a market which will use only 40 bullions annually. With 

 forest management we see limitation of the yield of each forest to what 

 it will produce continuously. This means that if forest management, 

 according to tried principles which have been successful both in private 

 and government work in those countries that make the forest a con- 

 tinuous producer of wealth, is practiced, not far from our present cut 

 will be seeking a market each year. It is obvious that there is a vast 

 competitive difference between the timber mine policy and forest 

 production in this respect. 



Private forestry has in few countries been so successful as govern- 

 ment. However, in most cases the government is competing with 

 units which are either too small to work in the most economic way or 

 with a class of owners not given to foresight in business affairs. I am 

 not convinced that working in larger units the large-sized American 

 corporation cannot do as well as the government. 



In European forestry the great government successes have been 

 secured under forms of government where stability of policy is more 



