THE IMPORTANCE OF PRIVATE FORESTRY TO FRANCE 13 



a third of the lumber which the country uses. Low conversion costs are 

 an important factor. The forests of France for the most part are very 

 accessible. The simple methods of manufacture by small local mills, 

 with almost no investment or overhead charges, are inexpensive. The 

 wages paid to forest labor, 5 francs, or less than $1 per day in 1917 and 

 still less before the war, is very low. With lumber prices influenced by 

 the importations of Baltic and other foreign stock, with keen competition 

 for all stumpage put upon the market, the standing timber gains the 

 benefit of the low costs of manufacture. The situation in the United 

 States, where manufacturing charges are the chief element in the mill 

 price of lumber, is reversed in France. The standing tree takes a third or 

 more of the selling price of its products. 



Forest Versus Farm Crops. — France contains large areas of land — 

 in her eastern and southern mountains, in the southwestern sand plains, 

 and in the rugged hills on the headwaters of the Marne and Seine — 

 which are fit only for timber production or for grazing. The presence of 

 such land — of relatively low value — is a further stimulus to private 

 forestry; 1,500,000 acres of private forests, for example, were created out- 

 right by planting maritime pine in the Landes. Her forests are not hm- 

 ited, however, to areas too poor for cultivation. The economic balance 

 between forests and farm crops has shifted at various periods in French 

 history. At the time of the Revolution the country was short of agri- 

 cultural products, especially cereals, and a large acreage of forest was put 

 in tillage. Fifty or sixty years later the pendulum swung back. Short- 

 age of farm labor appears to have been the immediate cause. Many 

 rural proprietors in central and northern France, finding their fields lying 

 fallow year after year, resorted to tree planting. There has been no im- 

 portant change since that time with probably a shght tendency in later 

 years to increase the farm area at the expense of the forest. 



We in the United States are prone to think that the farm must always 

 be given right of way over the forest; and doubtless that is the safest 

 guide in our present stage of development. The economic growth of 

 France has carried her beyond such broad assumptions. The demand 

 for wheat and the profit in growing it compared with the demand for 

 timber and fuel and the profit in growing these products are the considera- 

 tions which govern. The area devoted to forest is fixed by the balance 

 struck — over comparatively long periods of time — between all the 

 economic necessities of the country; and that balance has not thus far 

 hmited her forests, either publicly or privately owned, to non-agricultural 

 lands. This sort of readjustment is impending in some of the older parts 

 of the United States. 



The Importance of Private Forestry to France. — Two-thirds of the 

 forests of France are privately owned. Her 16,000,000 acres of private 



