134 FOREST VALUATION 



fair land. Today these conditions have changed, and agriculture is 

 called on to explain its smaller net income from better lands. In 

 this discussion it is well to keep in mind the following : 



1. Timber is a necessity to modern civilization. All substi- 

 tutes have not been able to reduce the per capita consumption and 

 in Europe any state 'with fair industrial development becomes a 

 timber importer as soon as its forest area drops below thirty per cent. 



2. The forest crop is safe and certain wherever forest is native 

 and even on prairies the forest once established modifies its own 

 local climate. On all lean and difficult, stony, rough, etc., lands the 

 forest is far more certain than any field crop. The forest crop 

 takes care of the land, the field crop drains it. 



3. The forest crop is durable, unlike potatoes, fruit, etc. A 

 few years seasoning increases the value of timber. 



4. Prices of forest products have gone up steadily for a cen- 

 tury and have more than doubled in half a century ; prices of field 

 crops in Europe and the United States have not changed materially 

 for the last half century. See Endres, Forst Polltik, p. 119, etc. 

 Rye, the great bread stuff, was cheaper in Prussia in 1893-1903 than 

 it was in 1860-1890. For the United States, see United States Dept. 

 Agri. Farmer's bulletin, 645, 1914, p. 23, the value per acre of the 

 ten most important farm crops was $15.74 in 1871, then declined 

 rapidly and did not regain this value until 1908. 



5. Forest statistics of necessity are averages since it requires 

 many seasons to grow a crop of timber. To be comparable at all 

 the figures for farm income therefore must be .taken as averages. 

 This is commonly overlooked and accidental maximum figures are 

 constantly quoted and repeated. "Great money in clover-seed," 

 "$400 per acre in cherries," etc., are repeated in journals and by 

 booster orators until the average person is completely misled. It 

 is one of the most useful works of the United States Department of 

 Agriculture and the Experiment Stations to gather truthful statis- 

 tics of the farm. So long as the booster succeeds in making the 

 people believe that there is big money in sand farms, so long the 

 public is reluctant to pay even a decent cost price for farm products. 



6. Forest statistics as used here describe large averages of 

 incomes not from the good lands but from inferior, largely non-agri- 

 cultural lands. It is doubtful if more than thirty per cent of all 

 German forest lands could be farmed continuously and successfully. 

 If all lands of Germany were arranged in five classes of equal area, 



