12 Forest Management 



The American lumberman is apt to consider investments in forestry 

 (■be it destructive or conservative) as ideal investments; outsiders ai-e 

 not prone to share his view. 



As long as this country abounds in merchantable woods, the lumber- 

 man has an easy chance, after exhausting the stumpage on a given tract 

 completely, to shift his capital to another tract, purchasing the stump- 

 age thereon out of the moneys obtained by his operations conducted 

 on the preceding tract. Usually, he prefers, for obvious reasons, the 

 purchase of timber to the purchase of the forest in fee simple. Under 

 such conditions, the lumberman cannot be interested in the production 

 of second growth, nor in operations merely withdrawing trees working 

 at a small rate of revenue. 



The owners of the fee simple — farmers, townsfolks, aliens — do not 

 command any knowledge of forest investments; having paid the taxes 

 on the land for a number of years without any returns, they embrace 

 readily the first chance at obtaining "big returns." These big returns 

 usually exceed the price by far at which the land was bought. Never- 

 theless, and just as usually, such "big returns" are a mere pittance. 



The Forest Service of the United States has before it an enormous 

 task: the task of proving to the owners of woodlands, who are ignor- 

 ant of present and of prospective values of timber, the advisability of 

 conservative lumbering. 



Unfortunately, there do not exist anywhere associations of forest 

 owners through which the members might be enlightened. 



PARAGRAPH VI. 



SUSTAINED YIELD ("POSSIBILITY"). 



Normally, the "sustained yield" of the forest is that number of cubic 

 feet of wood which nature produces in the forest annually; the annual 

 removal of this number of cubic feet does not decrease the original 

 amount of stumpage. The normal sustained yield equals the annual 

 surplusage of production. 



The cutting of a sustained yield — no more, no less — is indicated 

 wherever the capacity of the market is limited, a condition which we 

 meet almost invariably on the fuel market. In Germany, two-thirds of 

 the annual increment of all forests consists of fuel wood. In America, 

 the requirements of expensive, non-movable plants (tanneries, pulp 

 mills, mines) are in the direction of a sustained yield. 



When all merchantable trees have been removed from a forest, a 

 sustained yield can not be obtained any more. Before touching the 

 primeval forest, the owner must decide whether or not conservative 

 forestry, whether or not a sustained yield is indicated. 



Primeval woods containing a large number of idling and decaying 

 trees should not be worked for a sustained yield. 



It should never be forgotten that there is a vast difference between 



