Profitable Tree Planting 



posts each, the larger one four to six inches in diameter, the 

 smaller one two to four inches. There were 15,500 trees cut on 

 the eighty-acre tract in these two years, making twice that number 

 of posts. The lower posts brought ten cents each, the upper cuts 

 four to six cents. The tops yielded some fuel. 



The Division of Forestry made some measurements of 

 typical half-acre blocks on Mr. Yaggy's farm, in 1900. The 

 plantation was eight to ten years old, and a part had been yielding 

 posts and fuel for four years. Careful records of the height, 

 diameter, number and condition of all the trees on the tracts were 

 made. These were reduced to terms of posts, stakes and fuel, 

 at current market prices. To this record was added the results 

 of four years of thinning, and the total showed a gross value of 

 $267.15 per acre for the crop produced in ten years. 



An equally careful record was kept of the cost of every 

 step in the development of the plantation. To the expense list 

 was added rent of the land and compound interest on the invest- 

 ment of each year. The cost per acre by this record is shown 

 to have been $69.90 for the ten years. This deduction from the 

 gross value leaves a net gain of 1 197. 5 5 per acre, at ten years. 



The cutting off of all the trees would bring in this handsome 

 return, but it would be the greatest folly. As posts bring better 

 prices than fuel, so railroad ties are better than posts, and telegraph 

 IX)les than ties. Trees big enough for cross ties are salable for 

 general lumber purposes. A post worth ten cents can be grown 

 in six years. At fifteen years the same trunk makes a tie worth 

 fifty cents and two or three posts besides. At twenty-five years 

 it is fit for a telegraph pole, at not less than a dollar. The general 

 market quotations run from |i to $50 per pole. The wise owner 

 of a catalpa plantation thins his stand for posts and stakes, holding 

 his best trees until they command the prices of ties or telegraph 

 poles. The wood is as durable as any timber known. It is not 

 inferior when most rapidly grown, as many woods are. While 

 the large trees are maturing, young ones are coming on from 

 stumps. The plantation is thus a permanent forest. 



Hardy catalpa is successfully grown on the deep, porous 

 soil of eastern Kansas and Nebraska, south into Arkansas, and 

 east to the Wabash Valley. Outside of this catalpa belt, locust, 

 osage orange and Russian mulberry, all quick-growing post and 

 tie timbers, are beginning to be commercially grown. Tamarack, 



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