FOREST CONDITIONS. 



343 



the distribution among different classes of owners, 

 we are without data. The census of 1880 gave a 

 statement of the ownership by farmers of 200 mill- 

 ion acres in wood lots. This would mostly repre- 

 sent a conservative ownership, although farmers 

 do not always treat their timber lots as intelligently 

 as they might ; but it is quite certain that much of 

 this acreage has since passed into the hands of 

 lumbermen and wood-working establishments.^ 



Among these we must discern between the 

 jobbers, who merely buy stumpage, i.e. the timber 

 without the land, who, therefore, take no interest 

 in the future of either, and hence are least con- 

 servative in their treatment of the forest, and the 

 land-owning class, who are apt to take more 

 thought of what may become of their holdings. It 

 is, however, only very lately that this interest ex- 

 tends in the direction of conservative lumbering 

 and of keeping the forest as such productive ; in 

 most cases the policy of "skinning" is still the 

 usual one, that means culling out the merchantable 

 material, with a very variable result as regards the 

 condition in which the forest is left. Sometimes, 

 as when the spruce or pine is cut out from the 

 mixed hardwood forest, its absence may be hardly 

 noticed by the layman, the forest cover is little 

 interrupted, and the scattered debris sooner or 



^ The value of wood products, cut on farmers' wood lots, was 

 found by the census of 1900 to amount to less than 120 million 

 dollars. 



