APPLICATION OF VALUATION 5 



taining the value of the property bought or sold is evident. This 

 kind of work in the United States at the present time is very im- 

 portant and will be more important in the future than it has been 

 in the past. The mere cruise for merchantable timber will no longer 

 satisfy men buying and selling forest properties. To sell a forest 

 for the value of the merchantable stuff alone is equivalent to giving 

 away over half the value in many localities and this condition is 

 rapidly extending, 



2. Holding of timber for future use is a common practice 

 among lumbermen. In buying for ten or twenty years it is neces- 

 sary to compute expenses, taxes, interest, protection, probable losses, 

 and it requires an estimate or forecast of the price which may be 

 obtained at the end of the period or at the time of cutting. Taxes 

 and interest together with other current expenses come every year 

 arid accumulate with compound interest; the final value must be 

 discounted to the present time. There is a right way of doing this 

 and many wrong ways and some of our lumbermen in the Lake 

 Region and elsewhere are finding today that it is not always easy 

 to make a state tax commission see the right way of computing the 

 true value of a lot of stumpage which can not possibly be cut before 

 ten or twenty years. 



3. Timber contracts, leases, rights of way. etc., are common 

 and necessary. A long time contract for hemlock in a hemlock and 

 hardwood forest may become a very difficult and troublesome affair. 

 To draw up such a contract requires a forester's judgment; to settle 

 it equitably involves forest valuation and statics. 



4. Damage in timber, usually trespass or fire, is very com- 

 mon. In the past it was impossible for the courts to administer 

 justice; these cases were among the most unsatisfactory; the evi- 

 dence was neither clear nor convincing, the methods of calculation 

 could not be explained, they were never agreed upon ; it was a battle 

 of unproved assertion backed by a pretence of experience and 

 authority. As a result the courts granted nothing beyond a simple 

 provable loss of material actually saleable at the time of destruction. 

 Since modern forest valuation has found its way into the woods 

 business this situation has been relieved very materially and the 

 courts are glad to be able to grant real justice based upon an orderly, 

 intelligent method of determining the values. In fact the applica- 

 tion of modern forest valuation in the United States had its first 

 tests in damage cases. 



5. Taxation requires assessment of the true value of the 

 property. As long as it was a fight with local assessors the old 



