52 FOREST VALUATION 



This will no doubt remain so whether forest taxation continues on 

 the present plan or changes to a yield tax or single tax, for in the 

 end the income or the income value of the forest determines the 

 ability of the owner to pay. 



b. Administration and protection are usually given together in 

 recent statistics. Endres, "Valuation" p. 38, quotes the following 

 for the state forests of Germany: Prussia, Bavaria and Alsace- 

 Lorain about seventy cents per acre ; Baden eighty-six cents, Wiirt- 

 temberg one dollar and five cents and Saxony one dollar and thirty- 

 five cents per acre. Usually about sixty per cent of this goes for 

 administration proper and the rest for protection. Since so much 

 of the under-forester's or ranger's time is spent in work where pro- 

 tection and supervision is combined it is impracticable to separate 

 the two. It is doubtful, however, if protection proper is done for 

 less than twenty cents per acre in any of these state forests. Ac- 

 cording to Schwappach, the larger private estates in south Germany 

 spend about forty-five or sixty-five cents per acre and year for ad- 

 ministration and protection. 



In the United States there are no satisfactory, comparable fig- 

 ures on this point. The total appropriation for the care of approx- 

 imately one hundred and sixty million acres of national forests is 

 only about five million dollars or three cents per acre, a figure which 

 can not be considered here for it does not even indicate a reasonable 

 interest in the property. Of this three cents it is assumed that about 

 two cents an acre are devoted to administration and protection. But 

 everything is new ; a large amount of labor is absolutely necessary 

 to survey, locate, map and describe or record things, to enable any 

 administration to be carried on at all, and in addition much work is 

 necessary to attend to the orderly disposition of timber, grazing, etc., 

 so that it is doubtful if much more than one cent an acre is actually 

 devoted to protection and supervision. 



It is difficult, as yet, to estimate what will constitute a satisfac- 

 factory figure for administration and protection in our extensive 

 enterprises. Recent experience would indicate that protection of 

 the kind that will really protect can not be furnished under ten cents 

 an acre; about half this sum should be allowed for administration 

 if the property is to be properly regulated, inspected and its busi- 

 ness recorded. Undue economy in either direction is costly. 



c. Improvements in forest properties consist chiefly in roads 

 and besides these in buildings for foresters and rangers, and in tele- 

 phone lines. Occasionally special improvements like chutes, flumes, 

 etc., are provided, but they may well be charged to exploitation and 

 deducted from the gross yield. 



