8 FOREST REGULATION 



regular written Working Plan was made for this property. The 

 commission created for this purpose decided on a Volume to cut 

 each year and this cut was continued up to 1835, and has not been 

 modified very much to the present time. Since a great deal of the 

 forest about town and village were coppice woods where a piece 

 is cut clear each year and thus an Area Regulation grows of itself, 

 the regulation by setting a definite volume was probably the excep- 

 tion, and no doubt Schwappach is right when he states that Area 

 Regulation was the rule from about the year 1300 to 1800. 



The Regulation or the preparation and development of Work- 

 ing Plans for the forest was a matter of slow growth, in keeping 

 with the slow progress in all directions. Before railroads came into 

 general use, i. e., before about 1840, even the building of highways 

 was restricted to a few trunk lines, and most of the country roads 

 were almost useless for heavy hauling, and thus land-transportation 

 of timber limited to very short haul with little efficiency. As a 

 result of these conditions, the woods about the villages and towns 

 were largely overcut, and those a few miles away were hardly used 

 at all, unless the timber was Spruce or Pine and could be driven on 

 the stream. 



The income from forests was very small, in many places the 

 grazing and game being worth more than the timber. The net 

 income in the State Forests of Wurttemberg well illustrates what 

 these conditions were even after the year 1800 : 



NET INCOME PER 

 YEAR. ACRE AND YEAR. 



1820 to '24 $0.55 



1830 to '34 0.70 



1840 to '44 i . 79 



1850 to '54 i-05 



1860 to '64 3.16 



1870 to '74 3.62 



while today the average net income is more than $6.00 per acre 

 and year. 



\Yith net incomes generally less than 25 cents per acre and year, 

 the great body of the German forests was not in a condition for 

 better methods, either in Silviculture or in Regulation or business. 

 With the rapid progress of the past century, the increase in popula- 



