Rothrock.] J-^^ [March 2, 



proposition it is thought no one will object. But at present the State and 

 the individual are absolutely at cross purposes so far as the timber lands 

 are concerned. The township demands taxes for a protection which is 

 not accorded ; for improvements which it does not make and for profits 

 which the owner does not receive. The facts are at hand to show that in 

 certain portions of the State, timber land, which has yielded the owners 

 nothing for thirty years, has in that period paid more in the way of taxes 

 than the land could be sold for to-day. Is it strange that to save them- 

 selves, the owners of such lands should remove the timber and realize 

 what they can, then abandon them rather than pay the taxes? This same 

 timber would be worth much more to the owner if allowed to stand. The 

 township which drives the man to remove this timber, then to abandon 

 the land, loses at once taxes for present use, and resources of future value. 

 It requires no argument to prove that this is a false policy. 



We will briefly consider the results of a removal of taxes from timber 

 land. 



In the first place it would confer new value on these lands. Owners 

 would, instead of wholly abandoning them, at least retain them. Retain- 

 ing them, even uncared for, there would something of value grow upon 

 them. Here and there a tree, ofien a young growth of forest trees ; and 

 what was of no value would come now to have a positive value, however 

 small. The owner would have an interest, and what applies to the indi- 

 vidual owner would apply to the community, and the man who b3' accident 

 or by design fired land which was producing something and costing noth- 

 ing would soon be a marked person. Public sentiment instead of looking 

 almost with indifference on woodland fires would become actively interested 

 in their suppression. Fire laws would have, what they do not now have, 

 support ; and the law which hitherto was a dead letter would become a 

 living, real thing. So mucii gained as timber was becoming scarcer, the 

 next inevitable step would be to increase the quantity of timber produced, 

 to improve its quality and to diminish, so far as possible, the time required 

 to mature it, as well also as to make the maturing forest pay for its own 

 maintenance. 



Here we have at once the germ of a forestry system. It would have 

 the further advantage of being a system developed in harmony with our 

 own environment. It is probable that in a quarter of a century we should 

 be further on towards success than if we tried to adopt and adapt a foreign 

 system to the conditions of a popular government. 



Not only would the steeper, rocky hillsides respond productively to 

 this new policy, but at once another element would enter the problem. 

 Lands hitherto taxed as farm lands, but which were unremunerative, under 

 cultivation would be planted in trees. And from being costly unproduc- 

 tive lands, become productive lands entailing no cost. The barren hill- 

 sides of this generation would liave their vlrgii fertility partly restored 

 and by the time they were required to produce crops for the larger popu- 

 lation half a century hence would be in condition to do so. Then, when 



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