WHAT FOREST CONSERVATION MEANS 



285 



charged with a lack of interest in fire 

 prevention in the Northwest at the 

 present time whatever may have been 

 their attitude in the past. The lumber- 

 men in the Lake States are now work- 

 ing for legislation which will assist in 

 reducing the damage in that region. 

 The fires there last fall are a lesson 

 which will not be forgotten. An en- 

 lightened public sentiment, coupled 

 with adequate legislation, will solve the 

 forest-fire problem. 



2. It is essential that the methods of 

 taxing forest lands be made more equi- 

 table. The recommendation of the Na- 

 tional Conservation Commission is that 

 for purposes of taxation only a small 

 annual tax be levied upon forest land 

 considered apart from the timber, and 

 that no tax at all be paid upon the tim- 

 ber until it is cut. Farm land has a 

 value based upon its ability to produce 

 annual crops. It is right that it should 

 be taxed upon that value. Were tim- 

 berland taxed upon its value, based 

 upon the amount of timber which 

 it produces each year, it would 

 be fair, but when, as is usually 

 the case, timberland is taxed each year 

 upon the value of the timber standing 

 on it, which may have required 100 or 

 more years to grow, it is obviously un- 

 just. Timberland brings in no revenue 

 until the timber is cut. By levying a 

 tax then, it comes at a time when the 

 owner is best able to pay it, and there 

 is no danger that he will be forced by 

 unfair taxation to cut his timber when 

 conditions otherwise do not justify it. 

 Since there is no possibility of getting 

 a return from cut-over lands for many 

 years, the method of taxing forest land 

 recommended by the Conservation 

 Commission is particularly applicable to 

 them. W T ith practical exemption from 

 taxation, the owner can afford to hold 

 his cut-over land for another crop of 

 timber when otherwise he could not do 

 so. Forest taxation is entirely a mat- 

 ter for state legislation. The National 

 Conservation Commission and the For- 

 est Service can recommend methods 

 that seem to them best, but the enact- 



ment of them must be made by the 

 legislatures of the various states. 



3. Forest products must bring a 

 price which makes forest conservation 

 profitable if privately owned forests are 

 to be conserved. Cheap lumber re- 

 tards forest conservation. We are now 

 paying what we consider, by compari- 

 son with the past, very high prices for 

 many grades of lumber, but there is no 

 prospect that lumber will ever be much, 

 if any, cheaper. Some grades and 

 kinds must certainly advance. The 

 farmer plants and grows the wheat and 

 corn which he sells. When the price 

 goes below the cost of production, he 

 stops raising them. No lumber manu- 

 facturer has grown the timber which 

 he is cutting, nor has he in general paid 

 a price for it at which it could be prof- 

 itably grown. It is obvious that event- 

 ually the average price of the entire cut 

 of any kind of lumber must be a price 

 at which it can be reproduced. Higher 

 prices for forest products mean a much 

 closer utilization of timber ; the lumber 

 manufacturer will cut much more lum- 

 ber from the same ground and the con- 

 sumer will use it much more econom- 

 ically and carefully. The lumber manu- 

 facturer will reduce the waste in the 

 woods and at the mill just as fast as 

 the price which he can get for his prod- 

 uct will justify him in doing so. He 

 does not leave his top logs and poorer 

 trees in the woods so much because he 

 prefers to as he does because he cannot 

 sell the lumber which they will make. 



The National Conservation Commis- 

 sion advocates nothing which expe- 

 rience elsewhere has not demonstrated 

 to be practicable. We know that we 

 must continue in the future as we have 

 in the past to rely upon our own for- 

 ests for the great bulk of the wood we 

 use. We know that Germany faced 

 this same great problem early in the 

 nineteenth century, and that she solved 

 it in a way that is a model for the rest 

 of the world. We take 260 cubic feet 

 of wood per capita annually from our 

 forests ; Germanv uses but thirty-seven. 



