know that our timber supply considered inexhaustible at the 

 time the law was made is rapidly playing out; that the tim- 

 ber produced which will grow on this "land will have a value 

 far in excess of any interest that we can get on the sale 

 value of it. 



Supposing this million acres is sold under the present law. 

 We could not hope to get for it more than $5.00 an acre, be-' 

 cause our public lands so far have only averaged us a little 

 over $6.00 and these are the poorest of them we have to sell. 

 Therefore we would add to our school fund only five million 

 dollars. Four per cent is the highest possible rate of invest- 

 ment that we could expect to get on this money, if it were 

 put in the school fund and invested by the state. This would 

 yield a possible revenue of 200 thousand dollars a year. In 

 the meanwhile, the land would be going back to desert con- 

 ditions, would be supporting no one, and yielding no revenue 

 to the state, either in taxes or prosperity. 



This is a pitiful sum to represent the revenue of any such 

 area as this. Twenty cents per year per acre would yield as 

 much in direct returns to the state, and in addition the man- 

 agement of that tract of timber would furnish employment 

 to hundreds of men and increase the prosperity of the state, 

 materially. But why should we consider twenty cents an 

 acre as the revenue to be obtained from this land under for- 

 est management? Germany, over her entire forest area aver- 

 ages $2.50 an acre. Some of the provinces run up as high as 

 $8.00 an acre. One forest in Switzerland goes as high as 

 $14.00 an acre. Our land is as good as theirs better in most 

 instances and our trees are quite as good. We are perfectly 

 safe in calculating on our ultimate yield the equivalent to 

 this, and this would mean an annual revenue to our schools 

 of from 2 l / 2 to 8 million dollars. And this, remember, would 

 be a sustained revenue which would go on indefinitely and 

 increasing in value every year as the methods were improved 

 and the land improved under the forest system. Again, re- 

 member that this revenue would be applied directly to our 

 schools and not to our school fund. The forest would be the 

 school fund; the revenue from the forest the interest to be 

 expended on our schools. 



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