Forest Finance and Management 159 



in agricultural operations. It follows from it that 

 Central Europe, with its high cost of production 

 (high notwithstanding its lower money wages), must 

 receive higher prices for its forest products in order 

 to make forestry pay, just as it must receive higher 

 prices for its agricultural products in order to make 

 farming profitable. In the United States we will 

 not for a long time be compelled to resort to inten- 

 sive methods of production ; in fact, such methods 

 would in most cases be ruinous because we would 

 not have a higher market price to off-set the in- 

 creased cost. But giving due weight to these facts : 

 that the cost of labor in Europe is only apparently 

 less ; that the rental value of the land there is much 

 higher ; and that, with increased cost of production, 

 the price of staple products is little, if at all, higher 

 in Europe than here, it seems that we have even a 

 better chance to make forestry pay than they have 

 there, just as on the whole farming is more profita- 

 ble in the United States than in Europe. 



Still another consideration must not be forgotten. 

 If forestry based on silviculture were begun to-day, 

 its product would not be ready for market until 

 about the time when the merchantable timber pro- 

 vided by nature had disappeared. The wild and 

 the cultivated timber would therefore not come into 

 competition at all. The producers of the new sup- 

 ply would hardly underbid each other to any extent 

 so as to lower the price below the cost of production. 

 As to foreign competition, it is impossible to say 

 with any certainty whether there will be, seventy-five 



