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land which is too poor to yield profits in food production, and this use 

 for forest crops promises to yield a profit or large return over and above 

 the actual outlay in cash or labor, a return running into hundreds, even 

 thousands per cent. 



Against this certainty of large economic returns in yields of wood 

 there are two obstacles which diminish the financial profits to owners of 

 forest lands, namely, the cost of marketing the crop and the time re- 

 quired to produce it. Since the value of wood is determined, for any 

 owner of woodlands in any given region, by the market prices which 

 wood products command at the nearest point of delivery, his profits 

 are limited by this price less the cost of getting the wood to the market. 

 But often the initial form of the product, such as logs, must undergo 

 further manufacture, or the product is bought by jobbers or middlemen 

 who endeavor to keep down the price to the producer. Still more fre- 

 quently it happens that the purchaser buys the standing timber at a 

 lump sum and the owner fails to realize the value of his stumpage. 



Again, wood in any form is both a bulky and heavy product. A 

 cubic foot of green hickory weighs 42 pounds ; one of oak, 35 pounds 

 or more. A cord weighs between 3100 and 3750 pounds. Transporta- 

 tion costs are based largely on weight, and to stand a long train-haul 

 from the forest to the market the price per cubic foot or per pound 

 must show a margin over this cost, plus costs of labor in cutting, shap- 

 ing and loading, freight, remanufacture, and wholesale and retail delivery. 

 As all of the above processes constitute well-organized businesses which 

 will operate only on the basis of securing a living profit, the owner of 

 timber stumpage, even if he receives a fair price, gets what is left after 

 these demands are satisfied, and this margin may be too small to de- 

 fray any costs incidental to crop production. This partly explains the 

 phenomena of cheap stumpage values and low returns which even 

 now are manifest in regions which have an excess of woodland over 

 farm land, or are located far from markets. 



But the same economic processes which have operated to keep 

 down values of timber as a crop in the past, bid fair greatly to increase 

 these values in the future, provided sufficient wood is produced to rhain- 

 tain the customs of its use in major industries, and to prevent the too 

 complete substitution of other materials for wood. 



Prices for wood have increased more rapidly than for other prod- 

 ucts, and more rai)idly than costs of labor and transportation. This 

 leads directly to an increase in the margin left for stumpage values, and 



