LAISSEZ FAIRE VS. FORESIGHT IN FOREST MANAGEMENT 297 



and wood hold its own, if not regain lost ground. In the matter of 

 fire resistance, Mr. R. S. Kellogg is authority for the statement that 

 insurance rates are lower on mill constructed buildings protected by 

 automatic sprinklers. The business sections of cities will more and 

 more be constructed of fire resistant materials, but an enormous field 

 remains where wood is still the most economic material. It is prob- 

 able not one per cent of the farms in the United States are fully 

 equipped with buildings. 



A recent article in the Country Gentleman'^ shows that silo con- 

 struction is not even keeping pace in number with the increase in the 

 number of farms in the United States. The same article states that 

 "'many farmers who are holding off on the silo question, waiting until 

 the day when they can build a more permanent type, might earn the 

 money by installing a wooden one." The only objection to this state- 

 ment is that in the majority of cases the properly constructed wooden 

 silo is as permanent as the more expensive types, because even the silos 

 of permanent materials will become obsolete, usually through location. 

 Another article in the same number of the Country Gentleman shows 

 the possibilities of salvage of lumber from wooden sheds.* Wherever 

 the land is suited to permanent agriculture, progress of methods in all 

 lines and increase of production by more intensive methods will ne- 

 cessitate rearrangement and enlargement of the buildings from time to 

 time. The writer has had personal experience on farms both in the 

 east and west and is familiar with conditions in several widely sepa- 

 rated localities. On the basis of this first hand knowledge he does not 

 hesitate to afiirm emphatically that over 90 per cent of the present 

 farm structures, both residential and for farm operations, are obsolete 

 according to the best present standards. On the same basis of ex- 

 perience and observation it is a safe estimate that the average farm in 

 the United States could use economically 50,000 feet of lumber in con- 

 struction at once. That would mean 300 billions of feet. We have 

 the timber, we have the labor to handle it, and the obstacles to the 

 proper rural credit and other economic rearrangements are not insup- 

 erable to placing this timber on the farms, wh'ere it belongs, within a 

 reasonable length of time. This would be only a beginning in farm use 

 of lumber, since maintenance, replacement, and enlargements of farm 

 structures due to the certain increase in farm business which must 



s Country Gentleman, vSeptember 30, 1916, p. 1759. 

 ^Country Gentleman, September 30, 1916, p. 1746. 



