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FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



September 



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WASTEFUL LUMBERING METHODS IN A LONGLEAF PINE FOREST. 



acres in South Carolina, at the price then 

 offered me of 50 cents an acre, I would 

 now have a forest worth a great deal of 

 money. This I could have been assured 

 of if I had at that time put on one corner 

 of the tract one of the old slave families, 

 with a cabin and $200 worth of stock 

 and farm implements, and allowed my 

 caretaker any amount of ground for 

 cultivation up to 100 acres. I would 

 have ordered him to keep out fires, and 

 even if most of the merchantable timber 

 had been culled before I bought I would 

 now have at least 900 acres of good 

 forest, worth mam r times the original 

 investment and all subsequent costs. 

 In the meantime the old fellow and his 

 dozen "head," as he calls his children, 

 w r ould have made a good living, and 

 my tract would have been an object- 

 lesson for the people of the county. 

 The opportunities are not gone yet, and 

 in some places it is now more than ever 

 true that many such tracts can be found, 

 where the best thing that could be done 

 would be to put some reliable negro and 

 his family on part of the land, his only 

 rental being a patrol of the rest. The 



cost would be slight, and with a cabin 

 for one's own use it would pay to go 

 there each year to stay a few days in 

 the pine woods to see the forest grow- 

 ing. The writer has several such tracts 

 and will soon have more. The negroes 

 are actually living there, working the 

 open lands and caring for the forest, 

 and taxes and all other expenses are 

 very light. I can see in this a step 

 toward the solution of some of the 

 ' ' Southern problems ' ' the North talks 

 about, and have come to the conclusion 

 that the negro and the forests in the 

 Carolinas are all right if left alone to 

 work and grow. 



I have spoken of the precautions that 

 are necessary to keep out that gravest of 

 dangers, the forest fire, and I am per- 

 fectly satisfied that with thisdanger elim- 

 inated reforestation is assured with no 

 other effort. There are fire laws in 

 nearly all of the Southern States, with 

 adequate penalties, but they, as in other 

 sections of the country, are not properly 

 enforced. Men owning stock, and per- 

 haps 40 or 50 acres of land, will delib- 

 erately set fires which burn over many 



