TWENTY-EIGHTH ANNUAL MEETING 



153 



I want to give you an illustration in point, 

 and 1 will give you names and places. About 

 twenty-five years ago, Dr. Stewart, of Fay- 

 ette County, owned a fine tract of hemlock 

 timber. He was assessed pretty high. In 

 two or three years the assessor came around 

 again and doubled the rate. The doctor 

 thought it was a little high and said so. 

 The next time the assessor came back he 

 doubled it again. The doctor said: "Gen- 

 tlemen, I will not allow this to go any 

 further. " They came around again and 

 doubled it again. He said: "Gentlemen, I 

 will cut the timber off and you may have 

 the land," and Fayette County to-day has 

 neither timber nor taxes on that land. That 

 is the way it worked and it is to prevent the 

 continuance of that condition that this reso- 

 lution has been offered. 



Mr. Elliott, of Pennsylvania: 



The law which we are proposing to get 

 enacted provides that when any party own- 

 ing land proposes to put it into what we 

 term an auxiliary forest reserve, he shall 

 notify the Commissioner of Forestry of the 

 state, who will send an expert there, a man 

 learned in the practice and principles of for- 

 estry, to examine that tract, and if it is found 

 suitable, with a proper amount of timber 

 upon it, of any growth, he shall so recom- 

 mend that condition, and he will report to 

 the Commissioner of Forestry. If the Com- 

 missioner of Forestry finds it is in accord- 

 ance with the rules for reforesting lands, he 

 shall notify the commissioners of the coun- 

 ty of that fact, and if the owner of that 

 piece of ground shall enter into a written 

 agreement with the commissioners of the 

 county to cultivate that timber in accord- 

 ance with the rules and regulations of the 

 Commissioner of Forestry, the commission- 

 ers of the county shall notify the assess- 

 ors that they shall assess that land at only 

 one dollar per acre until that timber shall 

 grow to be large enough for merchantable 

 timber or sawed lumber. In the bill there 

 was a time limit fixed during which he 

 should not act. That was fixed for this 

 reason : If you undertook to control the 

 man's cutting of timber, you ran against 

 a very serious proposition. He owns the 

 timber and he has the right to do it, and I 

 do not believe, notwithstanding the decision 

 of the courts of Maine, that you can take 

 away from any man the right to cut his 

 timber if he sees fit. 



We got at the very principle that the Maine 

 decision wanted to get at, but we compen- 

 sate the man by reducing his taxation. We 

 do not take away from him any right of 

 property without due process of law and 

 compensation. Our State constitution pro- 

 vides against that, and I apprehend they 

 all do. The National Government never 

 takes a man's property without compensat- 

 ing him for it. The right of eminent do- 



main does not conceive that. If he cuts his 

 timber off before that twenty years has ex- 

 pired, or whatever time may be fixed as a 

 limit, then the tax which would have ac- 

 crued upon that property becomes due and 

 payable. That is the penalty upon him for 

 not holding his timber until it shall be fit 

 to cut. That is giving to the man the right 

 to own and control his property at a sacri- 

 fice if he wants to. On the other hand, it 

 encourages a man to plant and care for his 

 timber. 



Mr. R. A. Long, 



Missouri : 



of Kansas Citv, 



I was asked to prepare a paper on con- 

 servation of our forests, to be read before 

 the conference last May. In the prepara- 

 tion of that paper I gave quite a little 

 thought to the problem that is before us 

 now. I am wonderfully impressed with the 

 fairness of this resolution. I want to give 

 you an illustration that I was at that time 

 using, showing wherein the timber owner 

 was not treated fairly as compared with 

 other tax payers, and more particularly the 

 farmer. 



I found in my examination of the sub- 

 ject at that time that the farmer is taxed on 

 his crop only once. It takes about one 

 hundred years to produce a crop of timber. 

 It is taxed everv year until the timber is 

 cut, which means 100 years of taxes. In 

 order to arrive at an average of what the 

 farmer would produce out of an acre of 

 land, located in the district where we oper- 

 ate, namely in Louisiana, I took fifty years 

 as an average basis. I found that the land 

 was worth about $50 an acre, that land which 

 produces cane and cotton. The land pro- 

 duced to the farmer about $7.50 per acre 

 per annum exclusive of taxes. In other 

 words, it was net to him, and figuring the 

 average of the time, fifty years, would make 

 fifty times $7.50 which would be $375 the 

 farmer would get exclusive of taxes, out 

 of his acre of land. After that the 

 value of the land to start with, $50, 

 should be added, making his one acre 

 of land $425 ; while the lumberman, 

 after paying a tax on his lumber the number 

 of years he would hold it, would get about 

 $120 per acre. That demonstrates, it seems 

 to me, the fairness or the unfairness of the 

 manner of taxation as applied against the 

 lumberman. * * 1 understand that 



taxes are levied against timber properties 

 possibly to support half a dozen school chil- 

 dren in a district where schools are scarcely 

 needed. Taxes are levied against these prop- 

 erties for building roads where roads are 

 not needed. These taxes become so hard 

 to carry and so burdensome to the lumber- 

 man that, instead of having an inducement 

 to hold on and preserve his timber, there is 

 every reason why he should cut it off in order 

 to avoid this excessive carrying charge. 



