290 Forestry Quarterly. 



the Jack Pine has taken possession of the soil. This state of affairs 

 has, however, been so universal that the lumbermen have come to 

 think of it as inevitable. 



A little careful examination would show that the reputed high 

 cost of slash burning is largely a bogey held out by the contractors 

 who burn the brush, or used by the lumbermen wlio know better as 

 an argument for lower stumpage prices on reserve lands. The act- 

 ual cost of the labor used in the burning is small — rarely exceeding 

 tAventy-five cents per M. feet of timber cut, if the burners know their 

 business. However, twenty-five cents per M. on a cut of ten mil- 

 lions means an extra expense of $2,500, which is more than the av- 

 erage lumberman cares to put into it unless forced to it by reserve 

 laws. Is there not some way of reducing this cost so that the scheme 

 may be practicable for all private owners.'' 



The solution of the problem would seem to be in the cordwood 

 market, and especially is this true in the regions of Minnesota where 

 most of the lumbering of today is being done. When the lumber- 

 man has finished with the forest there are — including tops, broken 

 logs, defective trees, popple, birch, and sometimes some other hard- 

 woods of good fuel value — from ten to twenty cords of fire wood 

 left on the ground to waste. No study of the subject has been 

 made in this region, the rough estimate is based on the figures ob- 

 tained in the Black Hills Forest Reserve, and the guesses of the 

 lumberjacks and rangers, and is therefore only approximate. Is 

 there no market for this cordwood.^ For a very large per cent, of 

 it — especially that located in the portion of Minnesota abutting on 

 the treeless prairies- — there certainly is a market, and a good one. 

 The prairie states are calling for fuel and offering good prices for 

 it not so very far to the westward. Even the lumberjacks and brush- 

 burners on the reserve recognize this and sigh for an opportunity to 

 ship out cordwood instead of burning it up. Rough calculations and 

 approximate figures show that much 01 it could even be taken to 

 other markets than the plains at a small profit. 



What would be the result of this marketing of cordwood.'' The 

 woods would be cleaned of eight-tenths of the material that supplies 

 the fire of the cut-over land and the other two-tenths would be so 

 disposed that it could be burned at a very small expense. Wood 

 choppers could be hired — are hired in the Black Hills Reserve — to 

 chop wood and pile brush for little more than the cost of chopping 

 alone. When the wood is cut out to a diameter of two inches, very 



