54 FORESTS OF WISCONSIN. 



acre a year. This sum is only 6 per cent, of the total forest 

 expenses, which include all logging operations. 



We can not here consider whether all these efforts will pay 

 as long as the land is held by private owners whose fortunes are 

 only of today and whose heirs will prefer to parcel the land out 

 to inexperienced settlers. The experience abroad and also in 

 this country indicates that the state must undertake at least the 

 most difficult and unprofitable parts of the work, and that the 

 greatest good to the greatest number lies in state ownership of 

 forests. New York waited a long time to see private owners 

 manage rationally in its woods, but has found itself compelled 

 at last to buy the land and to establish a forest organization to 

 keep its mountains from being converted into desert brushlands 

 and its streams from being alternately dry branches and mud 

 torrents. A similar undertaking in Wisconsin would, at pres- 

 ent, be greatly facilitated by the present conditions of owner- 

 ship. The land is still held in large bodies and by men actively 

 engaged in a business quite distinct from speculation and dealing 

 in real estate, and therefore a transfer could in most cases very 

 easily be effected and at prices (25 to 50 cents per acre) which 

 would seem to guarantee financial success to forestry even in the 

 backwoods of Wisconsin. 



RESUME. 



Briefly stated, the present conditions are as follows: 

 The State of Wisconsin, with a population of about 2 million, 

 a taxable property of about 600 million dollars, has a home con- 

 sumption of over 600 million feet B. M. of lumber, besides 

 enormous quantities of other wood material, which, if imported 

 would cost the State over 25 million dollars. Of its northern 

 half, a land surface of over 18 million acres, only 7 per cent, 

 is cultivated, the rest forming one continuous body of forest and 

 wasteland. From this area there have been cut during the last 

 60 years more than 85 billion feet B. M. of pine lumber alone, 

 and the annual cut during the past ten years exceeded 3 billion 

 feet on the average per year. 



