Forestry and Government 165 



A forest, under reasonable natural and economic 

 conditions, can be made the source of a fair, steady 

 income proportioned to the investment. But like 

 all safe investments, very large profits need not be 

 expected. It takes more self-restraint than the 

 average, speculative American has at his com- 

 mand in times of "boom" and business activity, 

 when high profits are being made on every hand, 

 to resist the temptation of turning one's growing 

 timber prematurely into cash and investing the 

 proceeds elsewhere. For after a certain age a 

 forest lends itself very readily to being made cash. 

 Although the trees may still be far from the age 

 when they would be cut most profitably, they will 

 yield a large quantity of lumber and find a ready 

 market. If the owner should be in financial diffi- 

 culties, the felling of his growing forest would be 

 one of the best means of obtaining the money to 

 save him. In Europe much of the private forest 

 property is protected by entails and other legal 

 devices to prevent waste. Still greater tracts are 

 ancestral estates and their owners are restrained by 

 sentimental reasons from destroying them, but 

 even there it has been found by experience that 

 private ownership cannot be trusted to prevent an 

 excessive diminution of forest-covered area, nor to 

 insure a rational treatment of forests. For this 

 reason many of the European states are gradually 

 purchasing more and more of the private forests 

 for public management. In the United States we 

 will probably find, for the same reasons, that 



