300 FORESTRY INVESTIGATIONS U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



determining the value of forest soil and in predicting the market value of the products at future 

 times when they will be ready for harvest. 



All these difficulties, which are peculiar to the forestry business, at least to a much greater 

 degree than to any other business, require much more careful planning and systematic procedure 

 than is usually necessary with other industries in which the product is sold or expected to be 

 turned to account within a short time from its production and in which the cost of production 

 and the price of products can be more readily ascertained, the methods of carrying on the business 

 more readily changed or adapted to changing market conditions, and the fixed capital more 

 readily liquidated. 



This branch of the forestry business, therefore, in countries where the industry is developed, 

 has experienced very elaborate treatment, the purely economic or managerial problems forest 

 economy or forest management being sharply distinguished from the problems of technical forest 

 production, forestry technique. While this latter branch deals with the questions of silviculture, 

 forest protection, and forest utilization how to grow, protect, and use to best advantage the forest 

 products the former, forest economy, deals with the questions of forest valuation, forestal statics, 

 and forest regulation, how to determine the quantity of production, how to compare expenditure 

 and result, how to dispose of the forces of production, regulate orderly, and systematically 

 manage the forest property so as to produce continuously the most satisfactory money results. 



We speak now, it must not be forgotten, not of the business of (shopping down and turning 

 into cash virgin, forest growth, a mere crude exploitation of the natural forest resources in which 

 the present lumber industry is concerned, but we propose to outline the considerations which are 

 needful when we desire to engage in the business of producing the supplies for the lumber industry 

 after virgin supplies are exhausted, an industry which so far has remained undeveloped in the 

 United States. In the lumber industry of to-day the business methods, as far as the accounting 

 of forest supplies are concerned, are of the crudest. It consists in ascertaining roughly the 

 amount of timber 1 which could at once be readily utilized with profit, and no account is made of 

 any future values, or rarely so. 



The forest is treated like a quarry or mine from which the pay ore is removed, then to be 

 abandoned. If there should be anything (if value left or developed later, this is worked out in 

 the same way, like working over the dump of an abandoned mine. In other words, the lumber 

 industry is not a productive but a transformative industry, preparing the product for market; it 

 st nds in relation to the forestry industry as that of the cattle breeder to that of the butcher, and 

 wood production is not a part of it. 



The lumbering industry, concerned in the utilization of forest products, is only the tail end of 

 the forestry industry, which latter begins with the systematic management of the forest resources 

 for reproduction and continued revenue. 



In the forestry business we consider the forest somewhat like an orchard from which we only 

 reap the fruit annually, or like a herd of cattle kept for breeding purposes when we may slaughter 

 the old but look for a constant supply of young cattle, growing and maintaining a due proportion 

 of calves and heifers. Thus the forester proposes to use annually or periodically only as much 

 as has annually or periodically grown. If, for instance, he had found that on his 1,000 acres 

 the average annual wood production was 50 cubic feet per acre he would be entitled to cut 

 50 x 1,000 = 50,000 cubic feet yearly. 



In order to produce this amount continuously and in such form and size as to be useful, and 

 to permit a harvesting every year, there would have to be a certain amount of wood stored up 

 and distributed over younger and older trees or stands of trees, which are maintained as stock 



'The ascertainment of the amount of standing timber is done in various ways. Usually the judgment of a 

 more or less experienced expert, a " timber looker," is taken, who by riding or walking through the woods mentally 

 forms an idea of the number of logs that could be got from the land, and of the cost of moving them to the mill. 

 An improvement consists in making at least a few trial measurements either of the contents of average acres, or else 

 counting and measuring the trees of certain kinds which constitute the main value. This is done especially with 

 walnut, cherry, or yellow poplar, and other kinds which are especially valuable and occur scattered through the 

 ivoods; these are now often sold by the tree instead of by the acre or by the M feet B. M. 



A fair method also practiced is to sell by the "scaling" when the logs are cut and collected on "skidways," 

 where they arc measured and paid for by the M feet B. M. 



