24 BULLETIN 638, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 







may be devoted to either purpose as local conditions and the eco- 

 nomic development of the region make one or the other more profit- 

 able. Undoubtedly many of these intermediate lands, perhaps most 

 of them, for the present can be used most advantageously for the pro- 

 duction of timber crops. A great deal of land that may properly be 

 devoted to forest production to-day in all probability can be used 

 more profitably for agriculture fifty years hence. Millions of acres 

 of cut-over and timbered land in the Lake States, the Southern 

 States, and the Pacific Northwest are of this character. An im- 

 partial land classification would recognize this fact and would desig- 

 nate them as primarily valuable, under present conditions, for forest 

 purposes. This designation might well -be changed in subsequent 

 classifications, which would obviously be necessary from time to time 

 in the case of intermediate and doubtful lands. 



In making such a classification still another factor should be taken 

 into account. This is the amount of land that should be retained in 

 forest in order to prevent erosion and irregular run-off and to sup- 

 ply the country's needs for timber. Experience abroad has shown 

 that countries with considerable hilly and mountainous land are likely 

 to suffer from erosion and from alternating floods and low water when 

 the forest is reduced to 20 per cent or less of the total area. Expe- 

 rience has also shown that approximately 100 acres of forest land per 

 100 inhabitants are necessary for a country to be self -sustaining as 

 regards its wood supply, even with a much smaller per capita con- 

 sumption of wood than exists in the United States. Both these facts 

 can well prove useful to the Nation and to individual States as a 

 guide in determining the extent to which they should allow their 

 forest areas to be reduced. 



After a land classification has once been made, the next step is 

 to see that the land is actually used for the purpose to which it is 

 best adapted. At first sight it might appear to be sufficient to publish 

 the result of the classification and then to leave the matter entirely 

 to the private owner : since he naturally would be inclined to devote 

 the land to that use which would bring him the highest returns. It 

 is doubtful., however, whether this is a safe assumption. Taking 

 human nature as it is, it seems more likely that ignorance and 

 prejudice would still lead in many cases to the wrong use of land, 

 and, worse still, that a desire for speculative gains would frequently 

 lead to its nonuse. State supervision of land-settlement enterprises, 

 on the general principle of the " blue-sky laws " now applied in 

 many States to the operations of corporations seeking to sell securi- 

 ties, probably w^ould go far toward protecting the innocent but 

 ignorant settler or investor; and a system of taxation that would 

 absorb at least the greater part of the rental value that the land 



