390 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



ministration costs add heavily to the current carrying charges. If the 

 total carrying charges on timber in each region were paid out of the 

 receipts from current sales of lumber the annual charge on each 1,000 

 feet cut would be approximately $1.85 in the Douglas fir region, where 

 the timber itself is valued at about $1.35; in California, $2.50. where 

 the timber is valued at about $2.10; $3.^0 in the Inland Empire, where 

 the timber is now valued at approximately $1.90; and $1.17 in the 

 southern pine region, where the timber is valued at from $4.50 to $5 

 a thousand feet. Of these timber-carrying costs more than one-half 

 on the average is in the interest due on the timber bonds. Most of the 

 remainder is in taxes. Both are compulsory payments and have be- 

 come, in many instances, extremely burdensome and promotive of 

 constant overproduction because of the insistent desire to liquidate a 

 relatively unprofitable investment. 



It is obvious that private timber has been, in many instances, 

 grossly overcapitalized and especially that private owners have as- 

 sumed a stupendous task in attempting to carry the equivalent, on 

 the average for all regions, of more than 50 years' supply at the 

 prices which they have paid for it. The loosely constructed, ill-con- 

 ceived, and worse-enforced general land laws, as well as special legisla- 

 tive favoritism in the early days, are at the root of the existing situa- 

 tion. But private chicanery, promiscuous land grabbing, and fraudu- 

 lent entry upon the public lands have been contributory causes for 

 which private land greed is responsible and for which no legal or moral 

 justification lies. But however this may be, there is a just doubt as 

 to whether after all some of the private purchasers 40 or 50 years ago 

 at $1.25 and $2.50 an acre were not, in fact, overcharged by the Gov- 

 ernment. The system of public land alienation was wrong in prin- 

 ciple and its administration far from efifective in securing the more 

 equitable distribution of land which Congress desired. 



The Valuation of Standing Timber 



Turning for a moment to the South, we find that timber is capital- 

 ized at from $2.50 per thousand feet in the North Carolina pine region 

 for relatively inferior stumpage to $6 in western Louisiana. The 

 lumber manufacturers during the past seven or eight years, however, 

 have found manufacture unprofitable — at least so they themselves 

 have thought. The books of many operators do, in fact, show an 



