EXHAUSTION OF THE FOREST. 261 



Lumbering in America has come to be synonymous with the clear- 

 ing off of all the marketable timber, regardless of the future. It 

 treats the forest as tho it were a mine, not a crop, Fig. 112. Since 

 1880 the total cut has been over 700,000,000 feet, enough to make a 

 one inch floor over Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Ehode Is- 

 land and Delaware, or one-half of the State of New York, an area 

 of 25,000 square miles. 



Other countries, too, have devastated their forests. Portugal has 

 a forest area of only 5 per cent, of the total land area, Spain and 

 Greece, each 13 per cent., Italy 14 per cent, and Turkey 20 per cent. 

 Whether the destruction of the American forests shall go as far as 

 this is now a live question which has only just begun to be appre- 

 ciated. 



Another reason for the reckless American attitude toward the 

 forest is the frequency and severity of forest fires. This has led to 

 the fear on the part of lumbermen of losing what stumpage they 

 had, and so they have cleared their holdings quickly and sold the 

 timber. Their motto was "cut or lose." 



A third incentive to devastative methods was the levy of what 

 were considered unjust taxes. 



Hundreds of thousands of acres in the white pine region, notably in 

 Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, have been cut over, abandoned, sold 

 for taxes, and finally reduced by fire to a useless wilderness because of the 

 shortsighted policy of heavy taxation. To lay heavy taxes on timber land 

 is to set a premium on forest destruction, a premium that is doing more 

 than any other single factor to hinder the spread of conservative lumbering 

 among the owners of large bodies of timber land. * * * Heavy taxes are 

 responsible for the barrenness of thousands of square miles which should 

 never have ceased to be productive, and which must now lie fallow for many 

 decades before they can be counted again among the wealth-making assets 

 of the nation. (Pinchot, Agric. Yr. Bk., 1808, pp. 184-185.) 



On the treatment of the questions of fire and taxes depends the future 

 of American forest industries. (Bruncken, p. 226.) 



Undoubtedly much waste has been caused by sheer ignorance of 

 forest conditions and methods, which, if followed, would secure suc- 

 cessive crops instead of one, but it is safe to say that the desire for 

 immediate profits has been the dominant cause of reckless lumbering. 

 So short-sighted has the policy of private owners proved itself, that 

 it is a question whether any large extent of forest land can safely be 

 left in private hands. No individual lives long enough to reap more 



