332 UNITED STATES FOREST POLICY 



the special lieu selection act creating Mount Ranier National Park; 

 while 53,000 acres belonging to the Northern Pacific, 67,000 acres 

 belonging to the Clearwater Timber Company, and 22,000 acres in the 

 hands of the Edward Rutledge Timber Company can be traced to the 

 same origin.^ 



In the Pacific Northwest, the Timber and Stone Act was, aside from 

 the three railroad grants, the principal means of building up large 

 estates, while in some of the older sections of the country the Pre- 

 emption and Commutation Homestead laws were used more. The 

 manner in which these laws operated has been discussed sufficiently in 

 previous chapters. 



LARGE HOLDINGS NORMAL IN TIMBER OWNERSHIP 



Among the causes of the concentration in the ownership of timber 

 lands must be mentioned the fact that large holdings are normal in 

 timber land in most regions of virgin stand, just as small holdings of 

 160 acres seem to be normal in agricultural lands. A large holding 

 can be more effectively and more cheaply protected from fire and from 

 trespass than a number of small ones, more cheaply logged, and the 

 lumber can be more cheaply sawed and marketed. Efficient lumbering 

 operations, in many sections of the country, demand fairly large 

 tracts of timber — large enough to afford at least a fifteen or twenty 

 years' supply of timber for the sawmills operating. A mill with a 

 capacity of 20,000,000 feet a year — not a large mill in some regions — 

 should have available a supply of perhaps 400,000,000 feet of timber, 

 and in regions of light stumpage this might require nearly 100,000 

 acres. Even in regions of heavy average stand this would require a 

 holding of not much less than 10,000 acres. Thus it is that, as stated 

 previously, large holdings are worth more in proportion to their 

 acreage or stumpage than small holdings, and tend constantly to 

 absorb them. There is a very definite economic law, according to which 

 timber lands gravitate into large holdings. 



SPECULATION 



Some of the very large holdings in the virgin timber lands of the 

 West and South should not be ascribed to economy in protection or 

 9 Cross Reference, pp. 176-190. 



