THE WOODLOT IN RELATION TO FARM MANAGEMENT 41 



mous and have until recent years received insufficient con- 

 sideration. Lately attention has been directed to their im- 

 portance and value and a number of publications by the states 

 and Federal Government have been published or are now in 

 the course of preparation. Most of these publications deal 

 with the marketing of the timber products as this is the fea- 

 ture in which the owners are most keenly interested at the 

 present time. It is the feature whose realization is forced by 

 the practical necessities of the present moment while the care 

 and management of the woodlot as a permanent source of in- 

 come and general advantage to the farm, is overlooked. The 

 latter feature is of equal importance and is primary where 

 the woodlot is to be maintained as a permanent part of the 

 farm and not regarded as a stage in its improvement by 

 clearing, and consequent extension of the cultivated area. To 

 secure reliable practicable information on all sides of the 

 subject its study has been followed in a number of directions. 



The phase under discussion in this paper has been desig- 

 nated woodlot economics, and seeks directly to correlate the 

 practical economic management of the woodlot with that of 

 the farm to which it belongs and indirectly to the general 

 community. It was inaugurated at the beginning of the field 

 season in 1915 by the Forest Service and the Office of Farm 

 Management of the Department of Agriculture as a co-opera- 

 tive project. So far the study has been confined to the gen- 

 eral eastern half of the country, extending as far west as the 

 prairie states. As stated before this work deals mainly with 

 the economics of the woodlot and is a carefully planned at- 

 tempt to secure definite figures and basic facts on woodlot 

 and farm management conditions from the field and on a 

 number of selected representative localities and to correlate 

 and compare the information obtained. 



The method of doing the work was developed from a num- 

 ber of conferences between the two offices directly concerned 

 in which the lack of essential data of this character was 

 shown, the points needed and means of securing them grad- 

 ually worked out. Some forty or fifty questions designed to 

 bring out information along specific lines were framed up and 

 placed on a set of cards for use in the field. Answers to the 



