A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 879 



In Arkansas as a whole, in 1927, 5.3 percent of the total locally 

 assessed realty valuation was delinquent. In 1931 this was more than 

 tripled, reaching 16.6 percent. The forest area that is estimated as 

 reverted to public ownership as of 1932 is 1,120,000 acres; in addition 

 there are 800,000 acres of forest land delinquent but not yet reverted 

 to the State. 



Texas reports no long-term delinquency, for the reason that most 

 owners prefer to keep their taxes paid up to protect their equity in oil 

 or mineral rights. 



OTHER REGIONS AND STATES 



The above account gives a picture of the situation in several of the 

 major forest regions of the country for which information on delin- 

 quency and tax reversion is available. The regions with great areas 

 of cut-over land, much of which is useful for nothing but forest 

 production, like the Lake States, the South, and the Northwest, or 

 with areas of inaccessible or unmarketable private timber, like the 

 Northwest, face the problem whether private or public ownership will 

 prevail on a gigantic scale, a problem not encountered in those States 

 where the forest lands have other uses after the virgin timber is 

 removed, where conservative cutting has been practiced, or where the 

 forest is associated with agricultural use. 



In the Central States (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri) 

 the breakdown of private forest land ownership concerns largely farm 

 woodlands and waste lands, since it is in this class of ownership that 

 most delinquency occurs. The area actually reverted to public agen- 

 cies in the Central States, as in the South, does not present a true 

 picture of the marginal-land problem, largely because of the delin- 

 quency procedure, and the association of these submarginal lands with 

 more valuable lands. The practice of purchasing tax titles before 

 their forfeiture occurs is common practice. Thus, lands which are 

 submarginal for farming are acquired by successive owners for the 

 period provided by the State laws. In this way lands do not revert to 

 county or State, but pass from one owner to another as they fail to 

 make returns sufficient to meet tax assessments. In many instances, 

 where tax-delinquent land has no sale, the county allows the title to 

 remain with the original owner, rather than take it over to county 

 ownership. In some sections there is so much submarginal land 

 becoming tax delinquent that local government is entirely incapable 

 of handling the situation. 



In Virginia a rough estimate places the area of delinquent lands 

 which could be put into forest use at 2,220,000 acres, counting 

 1,200,000 acres of waste land which formerly bore timber and is 

 capable of doing so again, and 1,000,000 that are described as idle 

 crop land. Much of the latter class has been so eroded by attempt to 

 farm hilly land by tenant farmers that it is unfitted for further farm 

 cropping, a situation common throughout the piedmont. 



In North Carolina an estimate of the permanently delinquent land 

 for the eastern piedmont and coastal plains region is 8 percent of the 

 total forest-land area and 5 percent of the total cleared-land area. 

 These percentages applied to the rest of the State indicate more than a 

 million and a half acres of forest land and nearly a half million acres 

 of cleared land as ready for reversion. Tax delinquency is increasing, 

 and this year more than a quarter of all property in North Carolina 



