FORESTRY COMMISSIONER 



spring would require 2,500 employes thirty days. Al- 

 though some thousands of men will for a few years be 

 coming out of the logging camps every spring, some of 

 whom could be employed in planting, and although the 

 planting would be done in half a dozen or more counties, 

 still it is not likely the State could for a number of years 

 plant 37,500 acres annually. The State should not 

 undertake to do any more than it can do economically 

 and well. It should, however, engage in the work with 

 energy. 



Prussia plants and sows 45,000 acres of state forest 

 annually. The other German states in the aggregate 

 plant more. 



I believe the State will be able to purchase forestry 

 land at an average price of not exceeding $2.50 per acre, 

 but as the State has some school land that is only fit for 

 forestry, but which according to the constitution must be 

 offered for sale at not less than $5.00 per acre, authority 

 should be granted for paying $5.00 per acre when 

 necessary. 



The ordinary revenue is not sufficient to permit the 

 legislature to appropriate money enough to carry into 

 effect a plan of reforestation as extensive as the above. 

 To accomplish this there should be an additional tax of 

 three-tenths of one mill on all taxable property in the 

 State, being only thirty cents on each thousand dollars. 

 This would raise about $300,000 annually and be sufficient 

 to carry the plan into effect. That the plan may be per- 

 manent it should be authorized by a constitutional amend- 

 ment such as herewith proposed. That it may not seem 

 extravagant let me mention that for forestry Pennsylvania 

 appropriates annually $400,000 and New York $550,000. 



If the next legislature were to submit the amendment 

 it could not be voted on until the general election in 1911, 



