A Decennial Kecord 95 



iind there was never greater evidence of that than now. However, 

 this state has had some experience in reforesting. We have attempted, 

 and we have made an honest attempt, to replant some of om- cut-over 

 timberlands. Now, I have tliis to say about it. As a state pohcy it is 

 not a possible thing todav. 



The cost of the land, the cost of planting, the cost of the care that 

 the plant needs, the taxes that the state loses provided it reserves this 

 land for forestry purposes, make the price, if we compute it up to the 

 time that the trees might have become merchantable, so high as to 

 make it an impracticable thing. Nor is it, in my judgment, a state 

 duty. Let us assume that the state of Wisconsin would plant in the 

 northern part of our state a million acres of young pine. I do not 

 know what it would cost to do it, nor does anyone else know. The 

 best we could do is to make an estimate which would be liable to be 

 wrong, but we would have to wait at least 50 years before we could get 

 any merchantable timber. Now. when that timber comes into the 

 market it is not for the state of Wisconsin alone. If it were, it would 

 not be a supply for the country, and what we need is a supply for the 

 whole nation. So, then, those who agitate that the state ought to 

 undertake reforestation would do it upon the basis that it is a state 

 duty merely because we at one time had a forest, and that these states 

 that at one time had forests should now undertake this great business 

 proposition, this great speculative investment, in order that the whole 

 country might have a timber supply. That does not appeal to me. 

 It is not a state duty, it is a national duty. The national government 

 should recognize it promptly and take hold of the future supply in 

 an efficient manner. The timber supply of the future, the one which 

 is produced, should be the supply of the entire country, and whatever 

 it costs should be the expenditure of all of the people. There are 

 many states in the Union that liave never had any forests. Why 

 should they come in on a timber supply that costs them nothing? 

 No private citizen, I am sure, would like to invest his money in an 

 enterprise that could not possibly, under the most favorable circum- 

 stances, give him any returns in less than 50 years. If we go into 

 national production of liardwoods, why, we have to wait perhaps as 

 much as 100 years. 



In my experience as a lumberman I cut an oak tree in Missis- 

 sippi that was 76 inches in diameter, 52 feet to the first limb. It had 



