ms ul NO a eC 
74 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
(2) Pine slashings are ugly accessories to forest fires. How can 
they be rendered less threatening to timber interests? The lumber- 
men have found but two plans of prominence, the one to cut off 
everything of worth that might be destroyed by fire, the other to 
clean up the tree tops after logging. Last year a Wisconsin concern 
of large interests attempted to clear up the slashings from its sum- 
mer logging in order to protect its own standing timber. It found 
the cost so great thatit gave it up in despair and ran the risk of 
fire loss rather than incur the certain expense of the clearing up. 
I have asked lumbermen to estimate the cost of clearing up after 
logging. Their estimates range from 50 cents to $3 per thousand as 
an extra cost. I am inclined to take the lowest estimate rather than 
the highest, for it comes from the head of the largest logging con- 
cern on the upper Mississippi, and from a man who has spent thirty 
years in the pine woods. 
At the present price of lumber this added expense would be pro- 
hibitive to profit in logging. Which means that even at a cost of 50 
cents per thousand on the logs,no lumberman will clean up the 
trash of logging. What then? Only one thing is left; mow the 
ground bare of all the pine that will cut upward of eight feet board 
measure. Why not leave these very small pines? The slashings 
will burn some day soon, and all the small pines will be reduced to 
charred stumps good for nothing but for crows to perch on. 
Eight feet is better than no lumber, so the order goes to cut things 
clean. 
Are there no second cuttings? Yes,a few. These are from lands 
that were cut some time ago when the risk from fire was not so great 
and when it paid to log only the best pine, orit may be that some 
careless surveyor has failed to locate all the pine and the cutting 
has not been as clean as ordered. At the present low price of lum- 
ber, some lumbermen are threatening to leave some cheap timber 
thatit is not worth the handling; but, for all this, the rule is to cut 
clean, and usually the rule holds good. 
The thief is the second enemy. With the increase of settlers the 
thieving increases. Railroads and lumbermen may have robbed 
the state of its pine—you know of that as well as I—but on the other 
hand settlers are nibbling away at the edges of the holdings of the 
lumbermen like mice at cheese. If mice could be tried by a jury of 
their peers, no mouse would ever suffer death for his depredations. 
The jury system is the stronghold of the pine thief. I would give 
something valuable for an authenticated instance of a settler being 
convicted of stealing logs off the land of a non-resident lumberman. 
I know of valuable tracts of timber that might have been left for a 
decade yet but for this constant thieving of the farmers. As itis, 
the timber is hurried to the mills to be putinto such shape that 
stealing it may be counted an indictable offense. 
The third, and about the meanest enemy of the pine, is the tax 
gatherer. I have heard Mr. Weyerhauser say that on many a forty 
acre timber tract that cost him $100 ten years ago, he is now paying 
$100 yearly in taxes The same thing might be told of almost any 
old lumberman. This would be perfectly just under certain circum- 
