22 FOREST VALUATION 



B. RISK IN FORESTRY. 



The following statement is made with an apology; it is not 

 made because there is any special risk in forestry, or that forestry 

 is less safe a business than farming or other industries. It is made 

 because there is a very strong prejudice in the United States and 

 because this prejudice is constantly being fostered and its arguments 

 repeated in legislatures, among timber owners and others, as an 

 excuse for not doing their simple duty to the country and the for- 

 ests they control. The people of central Europe do not discuss the 

 risks in forestry. They have practiced forestry for more than five 

 hundred years. But many of the people of the United States who 

 have never practiced forestry at all, who still prefer to let the native 

 forests burn up rather than make any kind of adequate effort at 

 protection, are fully convinced that forestry is not practicable be- 

 cause forest fires can not be stopped. 



In speaking of risks, it is usually the fire danger which is in 

 the minds of the people. As is shown in detail in the chapter on 

 fire insurance in forestry, this danger is universally overrated. For 

 forty years the matter of forest fire insurance has been agitated' 

 abroad, but in spite of the fact that some good companies are ready 

 to take up this insurance at $1.80 per $T,OOO property, the forester 

 generally has not felt the need of insurance and at every meeting 

 where this is discussed it is pointed out that the actual losses from 

 fire, even in the pinery districts of North Germany do not amount 

 to more than one-tenth the amount of this premium so there is no 

 reason why large owners should spend their money in this direction. 

 The statistical reports of Baden and Wiirttemberg do not find it 

 necessary even to mention losses from fire, and Bavaria for years 

 staid below four cents on the thousand dollars worth of woods. 



In the United States without any effort to prevent the fires and 

 with many people eager to get rid of the forest, burning the forest 

 intentionally, the losses from fire have been very great. The report 

 of the United States Commission of Conservation in 1909 gives the 

 estimated losses per year, since 1870, at about fifty million dollars 

 for saleable material. This is about ten cents per acre per year and 

 therefore not far from the premium rate now demanded by the Ger- 

 man insurance companies, so that it was as cheap to let the woods 

 burn as it would have been to insure them in up to date companies, 

 even if this could have been done. It is evident then that even in the 

 United States in spite of all neglect, lack of law and law enforce- 

 ment, in spite of land clearing, etc.. which made burning necessary, 

 the fire losses in the forest are relatively small. Had they been 



