70 BOAKD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



years', — assumptions which are very reasonable. In other 

 words, for the next five years after the loans and the plant- 

 ing are completed the interest cliarge is met to the extent 

 of $80 by the thinnings ; during the second quinquennium, 

 to the extent of $200 ; and in the third, when the first 

 planting is forty years old, a surplus begins to appear. 

 Now arrangements for refunding the loan may be made, or 

 else interest may be paid out of returns for thinnings until 

 the sixtieth vear ; then the first 40 acres come to harvest, 

 yielding not less than $24,000, when it is easy to pay off 

 the entire loan at once. These rough calculations may, of 

 course, be refined, and the adjustment may be made even 

 more reasonable, reducing the charges for the earlier part, 

 and letting the future, Avhich reaps the benefit, pay the cost. 

 For instance, the State may bear the burden of the interest 

 charges until the harvest time, when the loans with com- 

 pound interest have grown to somewhat less than $70,000, 

 which three harvest years will wipe out. After that every 

 year the town may harvest a proportionate area, replanting 

 it, and pocketing an income forever of more than $20 for 

 every acre of land which is now worthless and a nuisance. 

 And all the State has done is to loan its credit, not one cent 

 is given in charit}^ ; and the town has made no expenditm'e, 

 except for the care of the property. 



Finally, however, there will remain probably a consider- 

 able acreage in such undesirable location or condition, from 

 the point of view of the towns, that only the State with its 

 broader and far-reaching interests can advantageously handle 

 these areas and make them useful ao'ain. 



Some of these areas may find private owners, who will 

 place them into great game preserves, and take care of them 

 for their pleasure, to the exclusion of the people at large. 

 If this is desirable in the spirit of American democracy, then 

 it should be encouraged ; but I am democratic enough to 

 prefer that the people, the State, should own as much of 

 these lands as a public domain or forest reserve as does not 

 appear inviting to towns or private forest growers. As a 

 matter of internal improvement, which promises both indirect 

 and direct advantages to the conununity at large, such a 



