1906 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



415 



last to receive due consideration. In 

 Michigan, in Wisconsin and in Minne- 

 sota, timber owners have been fine 

 picking for county tax boards, and in 

 these and other States the removal of 

 the timber has been accelerated by the 

 short-sighted policy of confiscatory as- 

 sessments. The dead goose has out- 

 weighted in value the golden eggs. 

 Even the recent rapid appreciation in 



too small to stand a regular tax levy. 

 A tree that is only worth three or four 

 dollars when it is a hundred years old 

 wll not assist materially in building up 

 county finances while it is a sapling. 

 But even absolute exemption from 

 taxation will hardly attract private 

 capital to timber raising in this State. 

 The growth of northern pine is too 

 slow. Other classes of timber in other 



Pure Stand of Sapling White Pine on the " Ten Sections," Minnesota Forest Reserve 



the value of standing timber could not 

 have stood the strain of the excessive 

 taxation that has ruled in most locali- 

 ties, and if this is true of timber that 

 has reached its commercial growth, 

 how much encouragement has there 

 been to the raising of timber from the 

 young trees. The annual increasement 

 of growth in a tree that requires 

 seventy-five or one hundred years to 

 become valuable for lumber is much 



parts of the country show rapid 

 enough growth to warrant practical 

 forestry where a large enough area 

 can be had. In this part of the coun- 

 try lumbermen will leave forest rais- 

 ing to the State or Federal Govern- 

 ment. Thus, with the exception of the 

 last, every one of these suggestions 

 are practical, and if Minnesota is to 

 have any standing timber fifty years 

 hence, every one of them will have to 

 be adopted and enforced. 



