Certain owners might save all or portions of other costs, or find them 

 properly chargeable to other lines of business which they conduct. Thus 

 a coal mining company might find it necessary to hold a large area of 

 coal lands, the surface of which is unsuited to agriculture, or other use 

 except forestry. In this case it would be fair to charge all the land 

 value to the coal, thus removing the heavy interest cost on land value 

 from the forestry costs. On Quality I soil this would remove a charge 

 of $4.02 per M. from the cost of producing timber if the company worked 

 with 5 per cent money. This would enable a company of this sort to 

 produce timber as cheaply as the state. 



In municipal forestry, a city finding it necessary to own land for 

 watershed protection might practice forestry without charging interest on 

 land value to it, and might also charge a large part of the actual admin- 

 istration cost to the water department because sanitary patrol is neces- 

 sary anyway. This would reduce the cost of raising timber to a city 

 below the average cost shown by the federal government, and make the 

 industry one of great direct financial benefit. 



When it is remembered that the logging and manufacture of this tim- 

 ber means that upwards of $8.00 is paid out in wages for every thousand 

 feet of timber manufactured, and that the city consumer may as a result 

 of the local timber supply get the manufactured product cheaper, where 

 the city already owns its watershed, no other argument for city forestry 

 is necessary. To put the case in another way, it may be stated that 

 since the average acre of forest soil will in this region produce about 500 

 feet of timber per annum, any city which practices forestry will for the 

 average acre thus kept in forest produce raw material which will some 

 time insure the payment of $4.00 or more in wages for each year the 

 land is kept producing forests. One hundred and fifty acres kept in 

 forest will support at least the equivalent of one laborer and his family 

 permanently, besides paying a handsome profit to the city. Municipal 

 forests of this type are common in Europe, where profits as high as 

 $12.00 per acre per annum are now made. Of course, no such profit is 

 possible at present in this country, but America is already well on the 

 road to this condition. 



Large Corporations 



The large corporation can practice forestry because of its low in- 

 terest rate and the economies in administration and protection due to the 

 ownership of large areas. Where it has holdings in several localities its 

 fire losses will not exceed the average losses of the community, so it will 

 be cheaper for it to carry its own insurance than to pay premiums to 

 a forest fire insurance company, even when the time comes that forest fire 

 insurance is available. Even a heavy fire loss would not cause a corre- 

 spondingly heavy immediate expenditure, as when a mill is destroyed, but 

 would be made up gradually in growing a new crop. In spite of these 

 facts the large corporation is not yet convinced that forest production 

 would be profitable for it, although a study of the question gives convinc- 

 ing indications that it would be so, especially in the case of corporations 

 which desired to make their life, and hence their investments, perpetual. 

 However, the present political efforts looking toward the destruction of 

 all large business enterprises may result in disintegrating these corporations 

 so that their efficiency and command of capital will be so decreased as to 



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