Woodland Taxation. 171 



student of forest taxation. The lumber industry of the West 

 will under this policy be " developed" as was the Ivimber industry 

 of Michigan. The finest of the forests will first be taken up and 

 exploited in feverish haste. The lumbermen will be constantly 

 struggling with a problem of "over production," which will cut 

 profits down to the last notch. The forests will be cut v/ithout 

 thought of holding them for a second crop, for it would, under 

 such a policy of taxation, be impossible to hope for a satisfactory 

 return. All trees which will now earn a dollar will be cut, and 

 the fierce after-lumbering fires in the huge debris which acom- 

 panies western lumbering will complete the work of destruction. 

 As in Michigan the lumber industry, after having been thus 

 artificially "developed", will collapse, and if there still remain 

 other forests to exploit elsev/here, British Colum.bia may yet do 

 as Michigan is doing to-day — import at a cost of several times 

 her former selling price a poorer substitute for the billions of feet 

 of timber which a few years since were sold practically at cost of 

 logging and milling, and her legislators will be inquiring 

 how many millions of dollars will be required to re- 

 forest the denuded mountain sides. Unfortunately, the reforest- 

 ing of much of this mountain land will be found impracticable, 

 even impossible, for with the burning of the debris, the soil 

 itself will in many cases also be destroyed. 



No words can too strongly condemn the policy of the 

 Pacific province. It is, however, simply an exaggerated form 

 of the policy in vogue in older Canada, and in the reckless strip- 

 ping of British Columbia mountain sides at the present time is 

 a valuable object lesson to all Canada as to the character of the 

 results to be anticipated from the collecting of a portion of the 

 value of the logs sold in the form of a ground rent. 



To remove all possible misapprehension from the minds of 

 any who may think that the "bonus" or "ground rent" is other 

 than part payment of the value of the logs sold by a province 

 or the Dominion to the lumbermen, it is perhaps permissible to 

 remark that lumbermen do not pay money out in the form of 

 "bonuses" or "rents" for their health nor for any purpose 

 other than for logs, and all their payments to the province, no 

 matter under what form they may be made, are payments of a 

 portion of the estimated value of the already grown or growing 

 logs. 



To sum up: the payment of a portion of the value of the 

 stumpage in the fonn of a cash-in-advance "bonus" is not only 

 disadvantageous to the legitimate lumberman — as distinguished 

 from the limit owner who speculates in the people's forest asset — 

 in that it locks up a large portion of his capital which should 

 normally be used in the development of his business, but it is 

 exceedingly disadvantageous to the forest, especially when a 



