630 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



as woods and mill-waste ; in short, a general train of results well known 

 to all students of the industry. 



The report shows that the widespread character of the industry, 

 with its 49,000 plants, cutting 40 billion feet of lumber annually, dis- 

 tributed over all the forest regions of the country, makes better organ- 

 ization of the industry difficult. Practically speaking, the industry is 

 overdeveloped in. the regions most accessible to market, which leads to 

 early exhaustion of supplies and the consequent removal of the bulk 

 of the industry to more distant regions. 



The question of timber ownership is dealt with extensively. It is 

 recognized that in the East, in the Lake States, and even in the South, 

 the supplies of standing timber, although mostly in private ownership, 

 probably do not constitute an excessive burden on the private owner. 

 The West, it is pointed out, has in private hands 888 billion feet of 

 privately owned timber, while the annual cut has never exceeded 9 

 billion feet. There is thus about 700 billion feet of timber in private 

 hands in excess of what the present annual cut would remove in twenty 

 years. It is assumed by the report that a twenty years' supply of 

 standing timber is all that a sawmill can carry. If this assumption be 

 correct, of course there is no possibility for private forest manage- 

 ment in existing forests, because the rotation length must be at least 

 fifty to sixty years in our best forest growing regions. The reviewer 

 would add that while it is undoubtedly true that the value of the stand- 

 ing timber in a forest organized for sustained annual yield, with a 

 proper distribution of age classes, would be less than the value of 

 twenty years' cut of equal annual amount all stored up as mature 

 timber, nevertheless we have no forests with proper distribution of age 

 classes, and must begin forest management, if at all, with masses of 

 mature timber, for the most part. The condition is somewhat miti- 

 gated by the fact that there are some young age classes following 

 fires, and that there are bodies of .inferior species of low capital value 

 which can be reserved for the later years of the first rotation, and that 

 there are inaccessible stands which will serve like purposes. With 

 these mitigating circumstances, which, as a matter of fact, are present 

 nearly everywhere in the West, the reviewer is of the opinion that a 

 mill company can carry sufficient timber to work under sustained 

 annual yield, the chief bar to such action being the high interest rates 

 still maintaining in the industry, largely as a result of its highly' com- 

 petitive condition. While speculative capital has served well the public 



