352 Conservation of Lumber Supply 



ing tariff on agricultural products as it would on lumber. 



The forests will be continually wasted as a matter of 

 necessity if free lumber and continued high local taxes are. 

 maintained. 



The timber lands are held in such small parcels or tracts 

 as to make conservative methods of lumbering, together with 

 reforesting and the protection of timber from destruction by 

 fire, impracticable. At all events, the timber lands must be 

 consolidated to make conservation a possibility. 



So that under existing conditions, I do not see but one 

 practicable plan to conserve the present forests and provide 

 for a future supply. 



Economical lumbering can be carried on only on a large 

 scale with sufficient capital and large enough operations to 

 establish large milling plants and provide them with a stock 

 of timber that will, for the first cutting, extend over nearly 

 or quite a century before it is once cut over. Then to apply 

 thoroughly efficient measures for reforesting as the land is 

 cut over, and to protect the whole tract from destruction or 

 damage by fire. 



This handling of the forests, the reforesting, the econom- 

 ical cutting and manufacturing in ways that will make a cost 

 for the low grades more than their worth now in the market, 

 must necessarily be provided for, and a tariff sufficient on 

 the low grades of lumber with which we cannot compete and 

 conserve the forests. 



In cutting the timber, it will be necessary to leave the 

 smaller size trees up to those of medium size. These will 

 necessarily have to be a continual source of expense in re- 

 foresting and protecting and interest on the investment. The 

 cost of logging and manufacturing, and especially if the more 

 conservative methods of producing composition boards of a 

 thinner kind, are entered upon, will make the cost of produc- 

 tion higher, but will increase the amount of available lumber 

 to the extent of two or three times what the old methods or 

 even more conservative, way of applying the old sawing 

 methods. 



Then the question of local taxation must be met and the 

 matter of taxing the one crop of timber every year for a cen- 



