FACTORS OF FOREST PRODUCTION. 131 



est management for timber production, while the 

 soil represents the smallest portion of the fixed 

 capital, soil and wood capital combined exceeds 

 the fixed capital needed in an intensive farm man- 

 agement, and on the whole two to ten times the 

 capital required in agriculture is needed to carry 

 on forest management for timber production. 



Two most important deductions from the stand- 

 point of political economy follow from this dis- 

 cussion. 



First, that the time element, together with the 

 large capital required in timber-wood production, 

 renders the forestry business undesirable to private 

 enterprise of circumscribed means ; that long-lived 

 persons, like the state and corporations, and large 

 capitalists, can alone engage in it as a business by 

 itself with hope of financial satisfaction. 



This does not exclude the farmer's wood-lot as 

 an adjunct to the farm, but he will finally find it 

 more advantageous, if he figures correctly, to man- 

 age it as coppice, not as a timber forest. 



Secondly, the fact that capital and interest, wood 

 stock and harvest, are mixed together, the differ- 

 entiation being made, not by the character of the 

 material, but by voluntary economic considera- 

 tions and self-imposed saving, and that, while in 

 the lower age classes the capital is tied up without 

 any possibilities of realizing on it, it is possible to 

 liquidate portions of it in the older age classes at 

 any time, making it readily available, to be turned 



