270 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVII. No. 424. 



maximum opportunity to do for himself, pre- 

 venting interference, direct or indirect, by- 

 others; it is not doing for the individual 

 what he could have done for himself, and is 

 not liable to the charge of paternalism. 



There are three different ways in which the 

 state can assert its authority and carry out its 

 obligations in protecting the interests of the 

 community at large, and of the future against 

 the ill-advised use of property by private own- 

 ers, namely, by exercising educational func- 

 tions, by restrictive measures, that is police 

 control, and lastly by direct control involving 

 ownership and management by its own agents. 



The choice of method in the United States 

 will naturally, and rightly, be in the order 

 named. As a general principle, only when 

 persuasive and promotive measures fail or are 

 insufficient, recourse is to be had to restrictive 

 measures; only when these are inefficient or 

 inexpedient is the state to own and manage 

 properties. 



As to educational measures, the author holds 

 that universities have the advantage over spe- 

 cial forestry schools and frankly expresses 

 the view that the introduction of the subject 

 into the primary public schools, as advocated 

 by some propagandists, is not desirable nor ex- 

 pedient except incidentally. The endowment 

 of scholarships, however, and the establish- 

 ment of experimental stations are earnestly 

 recommended, the time element involved in 

 forestry experiments being ample justification 

 of state aid in this direction. The dissemina- 

 tion of statistical information is also empha- 

 sized as a means of aiding rational legislation, 

 and the rational conduct of private business 

 as well. These would include estimates of the 

 extent of absolute forest-soils and their cul- 

 tural conditions, composition, age and charac- 

 ter of timber, in short the facts which a legis- 

 lature needs in order to act intelligently and 

 the private operator must have as soon as 

 forestry advances beyond the stage of mere 

 lumbering. 



In considering the attempts that have been 

 made by various state governments to aid pri- 

 vate endeavor, particularly by means of boun- 

 ties, the fact becomes apparent, curiously 

 enough, that paternal methods have found 



much more favor and are more extensively 

 used in our country than in European coun- 

 tries, and that these methods, though seldom 

 entirely successful, are still urgently pressed 

 upon our legislators. The timber culture acts 

 of 1873-1874 have proved quite ineffectual, 

 yet as late as 1897 in Pennsylvania, and 1899 

 in Indiana, the same idea has been embodied 

 in legislation designed for the encouragement 

 of forestry, years after the crude law of the 

 general government had been repealed because 

 of its abuses and lack of satisfactory results. 

 The method of encouragement recently in- 

 augurated by the federal government, namely, 

 to give to private owners specific advice as to 

 the management of forest properties, has much 

 to commend it, though it can hardly be ex- 

 pected that, in the absence of an obligation 

 to follow the working plan, commensurate re- 

 sults will follow. 



The taxation of forest property, as now con- 

 ducted in most of the states, is directly and 

 justly condemned as tending to encourage 

 forest destruction and discourage forest man- 

 agement. The customary method of assessing 

 forest property by including the value of the 

 standing merchantable timber is compared to 

 taxation of farm property assessed not only on 

 the value of land, buildings and machinery, 

 but on the value of the growing crop itseH, 

 which would be a most absurd and discourag- 

 ing procedure. In Wisconsin, for example, 

 taxes on tracts of hardwood lands, from which 

 the pine has been removed, have averaged 

 about ten cents per acre, that is to say, twenty 

 to thirty per cent, of what is probably the 

 year's production must be paid to the tax 

 gatherer. It is safe to say that no other 

 property is so heavily taxed. The natural re- 

 sult is that lumbermen propose to escape from 

 this extortion by stripping the land as speedily 

 as possible, and are not sanguine .as to what 

 the state is likely to accomplish in the way of 

 a rational forest policy. 



Still worse, perhaps, has been the outcome 

 of tariff regulations, which have resulted in 

 the more rapid cutting of our own forests and 

 the transfer of prosperous industries from the 

 northern states to Canada. Nevertheless, 

 legislation in this direction is not necessarily 



