322 UNITED STATES FOREST POLICY 



received the largest grant ever made by the government to any rail- 

 road, and in this grant was included a vast area of the finest timber 

 land in the country ; but the railroad sold much of the best of it — ■ 

 nearly a million acres to the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company, and 

 smaller tracts to other large companies, in many of which the Weyer- 

 haeuser family and their associates were to some extent interested. 

 Notwithstanding these sales, the Northern Pacific was in 1914 the 

 third largest timber holder in the United States, still owning 8.6 per 

 cent of the unreserved timber in Washington and nearly 30 per cent 

 of that in Montana. 



OWNERSHIP IN THE SOUTHERN PINE REGION 



In the southern pine region, there were no such enormous holdings 

 as the three just described in the Pacific Northwest, yet even in the 

 southern pine region a large proportion of the timber was in the hands 

 of a comparatively few large holders. In Louisiana, the greatest tim- 

 ber state in the South, fourteen holders owned 32,000,000,000 feet of 

 timber — more than the total stand of either Wisconsin or Minnesota ; 

 and in the southern pine region as a whole, these fourteen holders had 

 over 4,500,000 acres of timber land, with 50,000,000,000 feet of 

 timber. Most of the cypress of Louisiana was found in a comparatively 

 limited area covering the river and delta parishes in the southern part 

 of the state, especially in the great swamps ; and the great bulk of 

 the timber was in a very few hands. Fourteen holders in this state 

 owned three fifths of the supply. Florida is perhaps as nearly owned 

 by a few large holders as any state in the Union. Of the total land 

 area of the state, 54 per cent was held by 290 holders, according to 

 the Bureau of Corporations. The 182 largest holders owned nearly 

 17,000,000 acres of land altogether, some of it timbered. 



It should be stated that considerable of the timber acreage owned 

 in the South was owned in the form of timber rights and not in fee. 

 This does not seriously affect the significance of the figures given, 

 however, because the timber is itself the important item rather than 

 the land, and because the fee to the land is also generally in the hands 

 of large holders. 



OWNERSHIP IN THE LAKfi STATES 



In the Lake states, the ownership of timber lands was more concen- 



