FOREST PRESERVATION GRAVES, 44S 



possible for them under existing conditions. What is needed first 

 of all is a spirit of initiative applied partly in doing such things as 

 usirg reasonable precautions against fire and adopting a forward- 

 looking policy, partly in a thorough study of existing conditions in 

 order to find out what else technical forestry would propose and 

 what the cost would be. There is no reason why the lumbermen 

 should not work out the situation themselves, if they are ready to 

 meet it in a large-minded and constructive way. 



In the case of our public forests, as in that of our privately owned 

 forests, preservation through use is fundamentally a matter of in- 

 vesting capital in a growing timber crop. Whenever timber is sold 

 from a national forest sucli an investment is made. Regulations em- 

 bodied in the contract of sale require the purchaser to observe certain 

 conditions designed to protect young growth and favor reproduction, 

 while it is stipulated that he shall cut only such part of the stand as 

 the forest officers may mark for removal, and the purpose of the 

 marking is to secure the future welfare and a high productiveness 

 of the forest. The Government therefore invests in making such 

 sales : 



(1) The equivalent of the increase in the cost to the purchaser of 

 cutting timber under requirements of brush piling, avoidance of 

 injury to young growth, and smaller amount of stumpage obtainable 

 per acre because of the timber reserved. This increase in cost of 

 lumbering falls on the Government through lower j^rices, which a 

 purchaser required to observe such conditions is willing to offer for 

 the stumpage. 



(2) The actual stumpage value of all merchantable timber reserved 

 from cutting whenever the purchaser would have been willing to 

 increase his purchase by this amount had he been given opportunity 

 to do so. 



(3) The direct cost to the Government of planning the sale with 

 a view to benefiting the forest, of marking the timber, and of super- 

 vising the sale to insure observance of the conditions framed to pre- 

 serve the forest. 



In other words, just as the private lumberman, if he were able 

 to apply forestry and pay the added cost of operating out of his 

 receipts, would be reinvesting a part of his profits; so the cost of 

 handling timber sales on the national forests is largely chargeable 

 to capital account on any sound scheme of forest finance. The 

 average price realized for national forest stumj)age last year was $2.44 

 per 1,000 board feet. The average cost of these sales to the Govern- 

 ment may be put at from 30 to 50 cents per 1,000, a figure which 

 would be much lower were not so many of the sales on National 

 Forests for small amounts. This latter amount may be regarded as 

 the sum of two very different expenditures. One is the expenditure 



