1906 FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 505 



RELATION OE "GROUND RENTS" TO CONSERVATIVE LUMBERING. 



Ontario and Quebec $3 $251 $492 $923 $1,686 $5,611 $18,418 



Ontario (recent sales) 



and Dominion lands 



east of Yale, B. C 5 419 820 1,539 2 $9 9>35 2 3> 6 97 



New Brunswick 8 670 1,312 2,462 4,495 14,964 49,114 



Dominion lands west of 



Yale 32 2,682 5,150 9,84817,979 59,856196,458 



British Columbia 140 11,732 22,967 43,085 79,118 259,195 836,759 



From this table a lumberman may to remove at a single cutting whatever 

 see at a glance what his tax will be will earn a dollar at the moment, with- 

 when he returns for a second logging out regard to the future, for under 

 on his lands. To make a second log- such a policy of taxation it would be 

 ging profitable he must find on his impossible to hope for satisfactory re- 

 return a stumpage value, over and turns from conservative lumbering, 

 above the then government stumpage The imposition of a ground rent has 

 dues, sufficient to offset the two fol- been defended as a means of forcing 

 lowing items before he can reap any the lumbermen to relinquish their 

 return other than interest for his in- holdings of cut-over lands to the prov- 

 vested money : ince. If the lumbermen have any 



( 1 ) The value of the trees which he property rights in limits from which 

 refrained from cutting at the first log- they have removed the purchased tim- 

 ging, together with compound inter- ber, it would surely be unfair to take 

 est on this value at, say, 6 per cent. this means of dispossessing them. If, 



(2) The tax bill, which at $5 per however, their rights terminate with 

 annum per mile, will have amounted the removal of the purchased timber, 

 t other means can surely be found by 



$419 at 30 vears, which the province can obtain posses- 



1 SS9 at 50 years s i n f its own. Certainly, it cannot 



q,t, 52 at 80 years, be expected that lands will be sur- 



^o 697 at 100 years. rendered on account of "ground rent" 



taxation without first stripping them 



Particular attention is directed to of whatever might be marketed at a 



the manner in which the tax bill runs profit. 



up the longer the time between log- The policy of selling vast blocks of 

 gings. This is the most significant timber and pulp wood decades in ad- 

 feature of all taxation where the tax vance of trade requirements, to be 

 is annual and the return periodic. the happy hunting grounds of timber 

 Where the lumberman is the for- land speculators, has cost the forest 

 ester the whole influence of a ground revenues millions of moneys and will 

 . rent is toward early utilization and cost them many millions more. The 

 clean cutting, with the abandonment province of Ontario has been very 

 of the land after the destruction of the much more conservative in this regard 

 forest. The practical effect of this than others which might be mentioned, 

 tendency in any given case will be in And yet it would probably be safe to 

 proportion to the amount of the tax. say that the average log cut in 1905 

 In Ontario and Quebec, where the rate in the province of Ontario was sold a 

 is $3 per square mile over large areas, quarter of a century ago. This, of 

 the "injury is least; in British Colum- course, means that the average 1905 

 bia, where recent legislation has placed log is paid for at a price which has 

 it at $140 per mile, it will be greatest, long since ceased to represent more 



Taxation at $140 per mile can but than a fraction of its market value, 



have one effect: Lumbermen will aim A reasonable time must of course 



