THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST 115 



with other producers. If his acre yields 20,000 feet (the maximum 

 to expect), worth $7 a thousand, he has made his 6 per cent, the 

 community has gained a resource, and every one is satisfied. His land 

 has been taxed fairly and as he now has a crop to sell he can afford 

 to pay a tax on it also, if it is taxed at 3 per cent, or $4.20 an acre, 

 county and state will altogether have received from him the same tax 

 revenue they collect from other forms of property and industry of 

 like value and profit, and received also the other benefits of forest 

 production and of his expenditure of wages for protection. 



But this is just what cannot legally be done under our present tax 

 system. By failure to recognise that the growth, produced is a crop, 

 distinct from the land, grown at the owner's effort and expense, and 

 returning no revenue until ripe, the law now compels the repeated 

 annual taxation of the ovjner's effort to an extent very likely to amount 

 to confiscation. It has been seen that even under the fair system 

 outlined in the preceding paragraph, forest growing is not more than 

 ordinarily inviting and involves considerable risk and capital. Yet 

 it assumed only a fair annual tax on the land. Under our present 

 system, logically carried out, here is what would happen : 



The first year the tax would be the same. The second year a 

 fiftieth of the total fifty-year crop, which we have assumed worth 

 about $140, or $2.80, would be added to the land; therefore not $3, 

 but $5.80, will bear the 30-mill levy, and not 9 cents, but 17 cents, 

 actual tax will be paid. The third year the tax will be 25 cents an 

 acre.; at the twenty-fifth year it will be over $2 an acre. We have 

 seen that even a 9-cent tax amounted to an investment of over $26 

 an acre in order to produce the crop. The continual increase of 

 this according to growth would make the investment run into many 

 hundreds of dollars if the same interest is calculated, and in any 

 case would make reforestation financially impossible. 



In actual practice, the increased valuation would probably not be 

 made by the assessor in the manner just described. Instead of deter- 

 mining the rate of growth scientifically and applying it annually, he 

 now makes an ocular reappraisement at considerable intervals. In 

 most eases there is no increased value, for the land does not reforest 

 but is continually reburned. Where it accidentally does reforest, he 

 makes a rough calculation of the value of the second growth, based 

 upon no particular system and seldom aliky in different counties. 

 But the principle remains the same and the result differs only in 

 degree. With the most lenient valuation at 10 or 15-year intervals, 

 the addition of material which makes growing forests so different 

 from our stationary mature forests of today is bound, under our 

 present system, to have confiscatory effect. The land owner, so far 

 from being encouraged to establish and protect a new forest, is 



