RESULTS OF OUR FOREST POLICY 317 



000,000,000 feet — nearly 11 per cent of all the privately owned tim- 

 ber; and the eight largest holders owned 340,000,000,000 feet, or 15.4 

 per cent — over three times the entire amount of stumpage in the Lake 

 states. The Bureau of Corporations constructed ownership maps for 

 certain areas in the Pacific states, in Idaho, and in Louisiana, and it 

 appeared that of the 755,000,000,000 feet contained in these map 

 areas, 552,000,000,000 feet — nearly three fourths — was owned by 

 198 holders. 



ACREAGE FIGURES 



Concentration of ownership in terms of board feet is sufficiently 

 marked, but perhaps nearly as significant are the figures in terms of 

 acreage. The three largest timber holdings in the United States — 

 those of the Southern Pacific, the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company, 

 and the Northern Pacific — aggregated about 9,000,000 acres of tim- 

 ber land — since the forfeiture of the Southern Pacific lands in Ore- 

 gon, only about 7,000,000 acres — some of it among the finest in the 

 world. The five largest holdings in the country included 12,794,000 

 acres, an average of 2,560,000 acres each. Among holdings smaller 

 than these were 9 of from 500,000 to 1,500,000 acres, averaging 

 almost 1,000,000 acres each; 27 holdings of from 300,000 to 500,000 

 acres each; 48 holdings of from 150,000 to 300,000 acres; 124 of 

 from 75,000 to 150,000 acres; and 520 holdings of between 18,000 

 and 75,000 acres. Thus 733 holders owned in fee a total of 71,521,000 

 acres of timber land and land owned in connection with or in the vicin- 

 ity of this timber land — an average of nearly 100,000 acres each. 

 There were also 961 smaller holders owning a total of 6,731,000 acres, 

 an average for each of 7,000 acres — the equivalent of forty home- 

 steads. This makes a total of over 78,000,000 acres owned in fee by 

 1,694 holders — nearly one twentieth of the land area of the United 

 States, from the Canadian to the Mexican border. 



It may be noted that even within the national forests, private 

 parties owned much of the valuable timber land. In the national forests 

 of California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana, they had 

 nearly 15,000,000 acres. In some of these reserves as much as 30 or 

 40, or even 62 per cent of the land was privately owned ; and of course 

 the privately owned land was the best. 



