250 Forestry Quarterly 



per acre. If the average value per acre is $100 practically all 

 the roads will he graveled, well drained and kept up, and will 

 have a replacement cost of at least $2,000 a mile, not including 

 the sale value of the right of way for agricultural purposes, for 

 which it would be worth $100 an acre, or $800 per mile. At 

 $2,000 a mile the township's road cost equals some $120,000 ; add- 

 ing the value of the rights of way, $176,000. (There is little or 

 no soil waste in forest roads, since the tree roots go under the 

 road and the crowns meet over it). The sale value of all the farms 

 in the township, at $100 an acre, will be about $2,300,000, on 

 which the road value amounts to about 7.5 per cent. 



But there is a large additional mileage of farm roads on the 

 interior of the Sections. Then, to carry out the parallel, there 

 should be added the value of the fences, houses, barns and sheds, 

 machinery, vehicles and work stock, the farm waterworks, tele- 

 phone connection, etc. This could hardly be as low as $25,000 per 

 Section ; for the township, $900,000. The total for roads and 

 other improvements then reaches about $1,076,000, which repre- 

 sents nearly 50 per cent of the sale value of the whole township. 

 If it be objected that the farm is a more profitable business than 

 the forest, it should be noted that the census returns indicate 

 that the average farm in the United States does not net 4 per cent 

 on the capital investment. 



With all construction there are two costs, first cost and that 

 of maintenance. Foresters seem, as a rule, to have disregarded 

 this second item with a good deal of freedom. The time is 

 already here when it must be taken into consideration very care- 

 fully. Even the Forest Service has, as yet, no dependable figures 

 for maintenance costs and no adequate method of checking up on 

 them. If the matter is of the importance it would appear to be, 

 there should be detailed forms and regular procedure in re- 

 cording such costs for each class of improvements. On one 

 National Forest careful check on the details of telephone repair 

 was kept. The returns promptly indicated that a certain stretch 

 of line through an old burn was costing more in repair than 

 would the felling of the old snags. Maintenance records on a 

 certain trail showed that the original swamping had not been wide 

 enough and this was remedied on later trail work. Aside from 

 such utilities as these, of course, with a rapidly extending im- 



