A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 871 



short-term and long-term delinquency. The former applies to cases 

 where the owner is not in danger of losing his land; it may or may 

 not be a premonition of ultimate tax reversion. Long-term tax 

 delinquency, i.e., delinquency extending to near the legal time for 

 tax sale, is obviously a symptom that the owner may not be able to, 

 or does not wish to, continue to hold his land. When the delinquency 

 accumulates to the time when the local law requires tax sale or fore- 

 closure, it is an absolute evidence of the breakdown of private owner- 

 ship, the first step toward conversion to public ownership. The 

 appalling extent of tax delinquency for forest lands will be given 

 later in detail for certain regions. 



Tax reversion. Is defined as the forfeiture of land to the State or 

 county for nonpayment of taxes. This happens when the owner 

 fails to sustain the burdens of ownership and no other private party 

 is willing to assume them. Tax reversion may come in various ways 

 and at various periods after initial delinquency, for the laws of the 

 several States are very divergent on this point. In some, tax sale 

 may take place immediately after the first delinquency, in others, 

 after as long as four years. In some States foreclosure procedure 

 follows three to five years after first delinquency, and either the town, 

 county, or State takes title when there is no private purchaser of the 

 tax certificate. The period during which the owner may redeem the 

 land is likewise widely variable and in some of the States extends so 

 long and is so liberally administered that actual forfeiture of the land 

 is almost indefinitely postponed. Some tax delinquent land is ac- 

 quired directly by individuals by buying tax certificates, and some is 

 subsequently sold by the State or county after title has been obtained 

 through foreclosure. The status of tax abandoned land therefore is 

 in a constant state of upheaval; it may be technically forefeited to 

 the State and yet actually be in private care, or it may pass from one 

 private owner to another, or to the public, and then perhaps back to 

 a private owner and later back to the public again. It may be bought 

 at tax sale, merely to cut some remnants of standing timber, with no 

 thought of permanent ownership, and again revert. 



Donations. In various parts of the country there has been some 

 voluntary deeding of private forest land mostly cut over to the 

 States. This has been done not so much from philanthropy, as from 

 a desire to get rid of land which the owner thought uneconomic to 

 hold. There have been furthermore many overtures by private 

 owners to give to the States or the Federal Government forest land 

 that could not be accepted because of poor title, legal restrictions, 

 or other qualifications which the public could not accept. Recently 

 there have been instances where tracts as large as 100,000 acres were 

 offered in good faith as a gift to the Government. Certainly these 

 donations and offers are a very eloquent indication of a breakdown 

 in private land ownership. 



Land exchanges and sales of private Jorest land to the public are 

 frequently made when legislative provision for such transactions 

 affords the opportunity. The Federal Government is authorized to 

 exchange national-forest timber or land, or both, for private land 

 inside and in some cases outside the national forests. Private 

 owners have shown readiness, almost eagerness, to dispose of their 

 cut-over lands, being more interested in having opera table timber 

 than in holding cut-over or immature timber for a future cutting. 



168342 33 vol. 1 56 



