28 Forestry Quarterly 



of much of the association work and the fact that the State 

 organizations for fire prevention and control, in most of our 

 timbered States, are still, as a rule, either hopeless pretenses or 

 largely helpless for lack of adequate appropriations, show that 

 there is still little real understanding of the situation. Since 

 the advent of the forester to America the owner and the public 

 have learned that fires are largely preventable and that much 

 can be done to control them at reasonable cost. But even forest- 

 ers do not seem to have given much attention to the questions : 

 What degree of prevention and control is possible ? What degree 

 is practicable without prohibitive cost? What is prohibitive cost? 



For ordinary business any charge is prohibitive if it con- 

 fiscates profits, or if it reduces profits below the current rates of 

 interest on investment. For the private timber owner, this would 

 be the case. For State or National Forests it is not neces- 

 sarily true that there must be a direct cash profit from the forests 

 in order to justify their maintenance, but such a profit should 

 usually be possible, and it should be assumed that there will 

 be such a profit. Practically all of our privately owned forests 

 are, financially, little more than timber reservoirs with a land by- 

 product ; their values are on a speculative rather than a stable, 

 economic basis. The State and National Forests are to be, pre- 

 sumably, permanent forests, and are on a different financial and 

 economic basis. For the private owner, therefore, a prohibitive 

 cost for protection would be one which threatened to confiscate 

 the profits of the speculation. For State and National Forests, 

 if they are required to return interest on their investment, a 

 prohibitive protection cost would differ from that of the privately 

 owned forest by the difference in the interest required to be 

 carried on each. If the State or Nation can borrow money for 

 2, 3 or 4 per cent, they would probably be satisfied with that 

 much return from their forests. If the private owner must 

 net 6 per cent, there would be a difference in the maximum, 

 tolerable protection costs of 4, 3 or 2 per cent. In the long run, 

 this might amount to a good deal, but for present practical 

 purposes it is of little importance except in that, under present 

 conditions, the private owner must look more closely to the costs 

 of his protection than need State or Nation. 



As far as the administrative forester is concerned, prohibitive 

 costs are those beyond which the owner, private or governmental. 



