METHODS OF FOREST POLICY. 257 



timber famine (intelligible by the absence of means 

 of transportation), resulting in export tariffs as 

 early as the sixteenth and continued through the 

 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. To this mo- 

 tive was then added the mercantilistic one of desir- 

 ing to produce everything in the home country, 

 thus giving rise to protective import duties. Fi- 

 nally, the liberation from these economic fallacies, or 

 perhaps, I should say, the changes in commercial 

 economic conditions, and especially the influence 

 of railroad building since i860, led, for Germany 

 at least, to a total abolishment of all duties in 1865. 

 Now, however, Germany as well as almost all 

 European countries, those which export a surplus 

 as well as the importing ones, have protective im- 

 port tariffs, the object being, as aforesaid, to foster 

 the well-estabHshed forestry business and to pro- 

 tect it against competition from virgin sources. 



In Germany this protective legislation was 

 enacted in 1879, when the opening up of the vir- 

 gin woods of eastern Austro-Hungary, which are 

 simply exploited, not managed, had brought de- 

 structive competition to the forest administrations. 



The specific duties amounted then to about 3 

 per cent on the value of unmanufactured logs and 

 timber, and 4 per cent on manufactured lumber, — 

 .60 and 1.50 mk. respectively per cubic metre (70 

 cents per 1000 feet B.M.), — with the result of re- 

 ducing importations, of the latter at least, by 40 per 

 cent; but the railroads equalized the difference, 



