THE EFFECT OF ADVANCING VALUES 729 



practice economy and avoid waste in were just being explored, cruised and 

 the management of their business. estimated, revealing a supposed limit- 

 When the individual becomes the less supply of the finest lumber-making 

 owner of any resource, it requires no trees in the world. The yellow pine 

 legislation to compel him to take care of the Southern States was first begin- 

 of his own. Zealous but impractical ^ing to attract the attention of north- 

 advocates of conservation, newspaper ern lumbermen whose stumpage hold- 

 and magazine muckrakers, political ings in the white pine forests of Michi- 

 demagogues and insurgent office-seek- gan, Wisconsin and Minnesota began 

 ers, have in late years joined in a chorus to show signs of exhaustion, and a 

 of indignation and condemnation of corresponding enhancement in stump- 

 American lumbermen as predatory rob- age values. The development of these 

 ber barons, united in law-defying com- new forest resources kept lumber 

 binations, branded as undesirable citi- cheap. Select timber lands selling at 

 zens, public enemies wasting and ex- '-wo to five dollars an acre, yielding ten 

 ploiting the people's inheritance of for- to twenty thousand feet to the acre, 

 est resources. Consumers of forest made a choice pine or oak tree scaling 

 products, childlike in their require- one thousand feet worth less than fifty 

 ments, want to eat their cake and have cents. 



it too ; demanding cheap lumber which Contrast the nominal value placed on 

 means the rapid slaughter of our lum- this superb forest tree that had been 

 ber-making forest trees. Any concerted growing and maturing for a hundred 

 limitation of the production of lumber or two hundred years, surviving the 

 to correspond with the demand is hazard of devastating cyclones, insect 

 looked upon as a crime, a violation of ravages and destructive forest fires, 

 the Sherman anti-conservation law. with the cost of such a tree, if planted 

 The cheapest commodity in the United by the hands of human foresters, the 

 States today is forest trees, suitable for land on which it grew progressively 

 saw logs, the present price of stumpage, taxed for a hundred years, the capital 

 whether it be hard wood or soft wood, invested in the forest farm doubling it- 

 is only a fraction of what it would cost self every ten years through interest 

 if the trees had to be grown like any and taxes compounded. Suppose our 

 other soil crop. forest resources were exhausted and 

 Twenty-five or thirty years ago, for- the American farmer, forester or lum- 

 est trees in this country had only a berman should undertake to grow for- 

 riominal value and lumber prices were est trees for profit, assuming that lands 

 based on the cost of bringing the logs suitable for forest growth could be ob- 

 from the woods to the mill and con- tained for $5.00 an acre and, allowing 

 verting them into lumber, the value of $3.00 an acre for planting and pro- 

 the raw material or stumpage being tecting the young trees from fire, he 

 only a few cents per thousand feet, would start with an investment of $8.00 

 Under such conditions only the large an acre, the first year. In ten years his 

 mature trees easily accessible and of investment has doubled by the addition 

 good quality were harvested by lumber- of annual taxes and interest charges 

 men and all inferior or defective logs compounded. At the end of ten years 

 were left in the woods to rot or add his investment is $1G.OO an acre. Con- 

 fuel to recurring forest fires. Good tinning this calculation, at the end of 

 lumber was so cheap that low grades seventy years, the sons or grandsons of 

 could not be sold for the cost of pro- the ofig'inal planters \vouM find tln-ir 

 duction and freight charges to points inherited holdings in growing timber 

 of consumption. representing an investment of $1,000.00 

 The need or importance of conserv- an acre; and. suppose the forest crop 

 ing our forest resources received little has now reached sufficient maturity to 

 thought or consideration. Timber lands be manufactured into lumber, having 

 were cheap and abundant. The magnifi- escaped the hazard of fires and cyclones 

 cent forests of the Pacific Coast States and yielding 20,000 feet of merchant- 



