94 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 



yield will come from one-fifth of the area during each period of five years. 

 Consequently the cutting will return over the same land once in twenty- 

 five years." 



OUR SUPERIOR PRIVILEGE. 



The object of making the Biltmore case so conspicuous in this report is 

 to show that order can be instituted in the forests of Minnesota, where the 

 conditions are similar. The assurances of success are at least 50 per cent 

 ahead of the venture in North Carolina. Our lumber territory, our trans- 

 portation by water and rail, our mill facilities, our lumber and fuel mar- 

 kets, are superior in every particular. We have at least a hundred-fold 

 more raw material to utilize than North Carolina or any other southern 

 forested state. 



ACCEPT THE SITUATION. 



What hinders Minnesota, then, from undertaking to commence a forest 

 improvement system, not exactly after the pattern of Biltmore, but as 

 our privilege warrants for business enterprise? We have no time to brood 

 over the ruined condition of our forests, nor to berate any one for pro- 

 ducing those conditions. Let us accept the situation and see if we cannot 

 make it pay to bring order out of chaos. 



WILL LUMBERMEN COOPERATE? 



We cannot reasonably anticipate that lumbermen will pause in their 

 work to consider experimental methods, or turn back to reconstruct where 

 forest injury has been wrought. Not yet. We must be content with the 

 fact that really they arc friends of practical forestry, and do countenance 

 the object we have in view, but are not ready to adopt it. 



AN AVAILABLE POLICY. 



Prof. S. B. Green suggests the feasibility of utilizing a large tract, a 

 whole township perhaps, of the university lands as a branch experimental 

 station in the northern part of the state, located among the lakes there 

 and protected by the native trees. The chances certainly are excellent. 

 Under proper management it would more than pay for itself, and be of 

 immeasurable benefit to the state. This would be a good beginning. 



INIMICAL TO A REPUBLIC. 



But individual or corporate ownership of great landed estates, whether 

 forested or not, are inimical to a republic. As in the old countries, it ex- 

 cludes the common people from the shade and health-giving influences of 

 the thickets. It becomes the hunting grounds of the landed aristocracy. 

 It fortifies monopoly. Besides such ownership does not secure a permanent 

 forestry. Such estates are liable to be sold and cleared off, and the climatic 

 benefits neutralized. Generally private ownership of forests is destructive 

 to forests. 



As a rule lumbermen let taxes go by default, after they have cut off the 

 timber. This turns such lands over to the state, but the state does no 

 better, except to sell here and there a quarter section of denuded land to 



