256 



Yearbook^ of Agriculture 1949 



net decrease of 39 paper mills and 56 

 pulp mills occurred. The New York 

 State Department of Commerce at- 

 tributes this decline primarily to the 

 scarcity and high price of pulpwood. 



Pulpwood is now being transported 

 long distances. Some mills in the Lake 

 States haul spruce from Colorado and 

 Montana, Pennsylvania mills haul 

 from New Brunswick and Virginia, 

 and New York mills from Ontario, 

 northern New Hampshire, and the 

 Maritime Provinces of Canada. A mill 

 in the southern White Mountains of 

 New Hampshire recently purchased 

 pulp lands along the northern bound- 

 ary of Maine where the wood must be 

 floated down the St. John River to a 

 railhead, then hauled some 375 miles 

 to their mill. Coal-mining companies 

 also are concerned. To insure a per- 

 manent supply of mine timbers, com- 

 panies are acquiring and managing 

 forest land. Spool manufacturers, ve- 

 neer makers, roofing-felt companies, as 

 well as lumber companies, likewise are 

 seeking dependable supplies of timber. 



The beginnings of large-scale pri- 

 vate forestry in the North date back 

 more than 100 years to the large in- 

 dividual and family holdings built up 

 as permanent timberland investment 

 properties in Maine, New Hampshire, 

 New York, and other Northern States. 

 Management plans were seldom pre- 

 pared, but agents for the owners sold 

 cutting rights, collected the money, 

 and distributed it among the several 

 owners. Forestry entered the operation 

 only in that the land was held perma- 

 nently for timber crops rather than 

 abandoned or sold after the first har- 

 vest; a few individual owners actually 

 insisted on applying minimum-diam- 

 eter cutting limits. 



Other private forestry programs 

 have been functioning for two decades 

 or even more in the North. Outstand- 

 ing successes and some discouraging 

 failures have occurred. Obstacles that 

 caused abandonment of past forestry 

 programs still persist to plague future 

 forest enterprise. The good and the bad 

 must both be weighed before future 



trends can be predicted with assurance. 



Much cause for optimism exists, but 

 only a good beginning has been made. 

 Scarcity is a dominant factor in spur- 

 ring forestry action. So far, however, 

 effort has been concentrated more on 

 acquiring extensive holdings than on 

 building up high-yielding capacity on 

 the land. A few intensively managed 

 properties are yielding timber volume 

 and dollar profits at two to five times 

 the average return per acre. 



The North, as considered here, in- 

 cludes all States north of the southern 

 boundaries of Maryland, West Vir- 

 ginia, Kentucky, and Missouri, and 

 east of the western boundaries of Iowa 

 and Minnesota. My discussion is con- 

 fined primarily to large timberland 

 holdings, those of 50,000 acres or more, 

 but a few smaller holdings are men- 

 tioned to show important develop- 

 ments in private forestry. All types of 

 ownerships are included whether the 

 land is held by milling companies for 

 their supplies, by investors, or by those 

 interested in subsurface rights. 



OWNERSHIP of large forest holdings 

 in the North is distributed among in- 

 dividual owners, families, investment 

 companies, pulp and paper compa- 

 nies, lumber companies, mining com- 

 panies, and some others. 



The large private holdings are con- 

 centrated in Maine, which has 31 

 owners who control more than half 

 the total area in large holdings in the 

 North. Protection of forests against 

 fire is good in almost all cases. The 

 exceptions are the forests owned by 

 coal-mining companies, where hazards 

 are high, local interest low, and public 

 cooperation in fire protection meager. 

 The degree of protection attained, 

 however, is determined more by the 

 work of the State fire-control organi- 

 zations than by special effort of indi- 

 vidual owners. The companies that 

 have their own fire-control organiza- 

 tions are the exception in the North. 



The cutting practices currently ap- 

 plied over most of the large holdings 

 leave much to be desired. Many prop- 



