224 



THE FORESTER. 



September, 



During the session of the Summer 

 School, it was visited by Mr. Gifford 

 Pinchot, Forester of the U. S. Dept. of 

 Agriculture, who was mainly instrumental 

 in founding the Yale Forest School, and 

 by Capt. Geo. P. Ahern of the U. S. 

 Army, who was graduated from the Mili- 

 tary Academy at West Point in 18S2 and 

 from the Yale Law School in 1S95. Capt. 

 Ahern is now Director of the Bureau of 



Forestry of the Philippine Islands, which 

 controls fifty million acres of public forest 

 land. 



The Yale Summer School of Forestry is 

 due to the generous interest of Mr. James 

 W. Pinchot, of Grey Towers, who has 

 supplied the necessary building and equip- 

 ment. The school is well equipped with 

 microscopes and a variety of other instru- 

 ments, and a small but well chosen library. 



INVESTMENTS OF SAFETY AND PROFIT. 



THE following article is a clear and 

 concise argument in favor of the 

 management of private timber 

 holdings along the lines of practical for- 

 estry. It is also quite suggestive of the 

 present tendency of lumbering when it is 

 stated that the article was published as an 

 editorial in a recent number of the Ameri- 

 can Ln?7tberma?t, one of the leading lum- 

 ber trade journals of the country, and from 

 whose pages we reprint it. 



" The preservation of the forests of the 

 United States rests in the hands of private 

 timber owners with merely the assistance 

 of the state and federal governments. This 

 is so because practically all the timber 

 lands of much value for lumber purposes 

 are owned by private individuals or cor- 

 porations. 



" Until within a few years lumber values 

 were such that private parties making a 

 business of lumbering, instead of merely 

 making a lumber business accessory to 

 some park scheme, could not afford to do 

 the expensive logging necessary to preserve 

 the forests. To cut only trees above twelve 

 or fifteen inches in diameter involves a 

 considerable added expense over cleaning 

 the ground as they go, and to clean the 

 ground of tops and other inflammable 

 debris is still another expense which would 

 put a business so conducted almost out of 

 competition with that of the ordinary sort. 

 Lumber is now high enough, however, so 

 that if lumbermen will be content with a 



nominally lighter annual profit they can 

 make preservative lumbering pay and feel 

 that what they sacrifice in current profits 

 or in actual money returns will be more 

 than compensated for by the increase in 

 the value of the capital remaining in the 

 timber, by growth and steadily higher 

 values. 



" We wish again to call the attention of 

 heavy timber owners to a phase of the 

 question, heretofore mentioned, which in 

 the past has been neglected and which 

 now can receive recognition only because 

 of the changed conditions surrounding 

 the timber business and the lumber trade. 

 It is the advisability of making their per- 

 manent investments in timber. The aver- 

 age lumberman buys timber solely as the 

 basis of the lumber manufacturing opera- 

 tion. He will put in a mill calculated to 

 cut it out in about ten years, for that is 

 considered the average life of a sawmill ; 

 then he will bend every energy to cutting 

 out that timber and marketing it that is 

 to say, converting it again into money. 

 When he shall have completed this pro- 

 cess of conversion he must either repeat 

 the operation or, if he feel that he is in 

 position to retire, find a permanent in- 

 vestment for his capital in some other line. 

 He will go into banks, he will buy city 

 real estate, or stocks or bonds, or perhaps 

 put his money with a trust company. In 

 any event he has it in something with 

 which he is not familiar, in which he has 



