IS LUMBER A CRIME? 



thus increasing the life of the virgin 

 forests ten years. It will also enable 

 and encourage the land owner to grow 

 trees for the market so that when the 

 virgin timber is gone there will be new 

 forests to take their place. The cost of 

 growing timber where the State fixes a 

 valuation of one dollar per acre for tax- 

 ation purposes on the land for thirty 

 or forty years and does not tax the 

 growing timber is as follows : 



Assessed value $1 acre for 30 

 years and compound interest 



at 6% $1.(>7 



Present value of land- 3.00 



Cost of planting trees per acre_. 5.00 



Compound interest for 29 years 37.94 

 Care of timber at 2 cents acre 



and compound interest- 1.67 



Total cost $49.28 



There will be 5,000 feet per acre in 

 30 years' time at a cost of about $1 0.011 

 per M. feet. It's a good investment 

 a good clean business to engage in. 



IS LUMBER A CRIME? 



By GEORGE H. HOLT 



ONE man has made a national 

 newspaper reputation by declaim- 

 ing against the "Criminal Match." 

 Another has made a tour of the coun- 

 try to exploit his catch phrase, "The 

 shingle roof is not a covering, but a 

 crime." 



The Fire Insurance propaganda with 

 its ninety-odd class-periodicals is pro- 

 moting mass meetings in every State 

 and city denouncing all forms of wood 

 structure and utility as guilty of the 

 "National Disgrace" of fire waste, and 

 denouncing all responsible officials as 

 criminals who do not use their official 

 positions and power to prohibit its use. 



The sensational press has heedlessly 

 and ignorantly joined in the hue and 

 cry, and the unenlightened portion of 

 the "dear people" which takes its tone 

 from head lines is hurling stones and 

 clubs and epithets at the "Lumber 

 Trust"- that mythological, disembodied 

 Banshee in blissful ignorance of tin- 

 facts and of its own best interests. 



Our natural enemies, the purveyors 

 and manufacturers of competing ma- 

 terial, and novel, untried substitute, 

 are spending mints of easy money in 

 advertising and promoting the sale and 

 use of their pet fads, and are not con- 

 science-smitten when they decorate 

 their pronouncements with all the lurid 

 colors which they can borrow from 

 their evil-disposed or ignorant collab- 

 orators. 



Building ordinances and restriction- 

 are enacted and enforced upon the 

 false assumption that if matches and 

 mice and shingles and In nber and every 

 form and use of wood were prohibited, 

 property and life would be forever safe 

 from the Fire Hazard, and everybody 

 would be happier. 



In this hour of unrest, when any 

 demagogue can get a hearing by pro- 

 claiming that "Everything that is, is 

 wrong," the likelihood is that we are 

 on the road to destruction of much that 

 is good, along with so re things that are 

 bad. A wrong diagnosis leads to a fatal 

 disaster, when a right diagnosis might 

 prolong life and happiness. 



What about the criminal match? 

 The tests made by the Underwriters 

 themselves disprove that charge. They 

 show that "safe" matches share the re- 

 sponsibility equally with "unsafe" 

 matches. It is the' careless use of 

 matches, not the matches themselves 

 that should bear the blame. 



The actual tests of "mice and 

 matches" and "rats au<! matches" re- 

 duce to ridicule the tabulations ot 

 losses fro:n those cause . although the\ 

 have become a staii(!;'i^ M-are-head in 

 all annual reports () f fire loss. 



What about the "Criminal Shingle"? 



There are no Statistics worthy of the 

 slightest respect which tend to jnstif\ 

 that false alarm. Think of the eleven 

 million and odd buildings in this coun- 



