170 THE BOOK OF FORESTRY 



While there undoubtedly has been unnecessary waste 

 in our logging, the chief difficulty has been in finding 

 a market for the inferior grades of timber. When a 

 financial panic hits the country or the lumber production 

 becomes too great, the prices of lumber shrink until 

 the knotty boards which can be sawed from the tree tops 

 do not bring even enough to pay for their making. The 

 only thing that can be done then is to leave them in 

 the woods. This means waste, of course, but until the 

 prices of wood products have risen to the point where 

 it will pay to use such material, it must be left to rot 

 on the ground. 



Forest Taxation. One of the great drawbacks to 

 lumbering in the past has been a high rate of taxation. 

 When timber land had little or no value and the tax rate 

 was low an owner could hold his forest until a good 

 price was to be obtained for his trees and then, if the 

 kind of forest permitted, he could cut out only the best 

 individuals, reserving the smaller ones for another crop. 

 Much of the forest land in Maine has been cut over 

 three or four times. 



When taxes are high, however, the owner of timber 

 land is coirpelled to harvest his crop to avoid loss and 

 in some of the Western States where the forest counties 

 levy a tax of five to six per cent per year on the full 

 value of the standing timber the country is soon 

 cleared of its valuable forests as a result of the high 

 taxation, since the taxes would soon eat up the profit. 

 If a woodlot is taxed once each year, the timber crop is 

 taxed from forty-five to sixty times during its life 

 whereas field crops are taxed only once. The ideal 

 way of taxing forests which is being adopted by some 

 of the States is to allow forest land to remain untaxed 

 until the timber is cut and then when he receives the 



