FIFTH NATIONAL CONSERVATION CONGRESS 131 



ordinarily inviting and involves considerable risk and capital. Yet it assumed only 

 a fair annual tax on the land. Under our present system, logically carried out, 

 here is what would happen : 



The first year the tax would be the same. The second year a fiftieth of 

 the total fifty-year crop, which we have assumed worth about $140, or $2.80, 

 would be added to the land ; therefore not $3, but $5.80, will bear the 30-mill levy, 

 and not 9 cents, but 17 cents, actual tax will be paid. The third year the tax 

 will be 25 cents an acre ; at the twenty-fifth year it will be over $2 an acre. We 

 have seen that even a 9-cent tax amounted to an investment of over $26 an acre 

 in order to produce the crop. The continual increase of this according to growth 

 would make the investment run into many hundreds of dollars if the same interest 

 is calculated, and in any case would make reforestation financially impossible. 



In actual practice, the increased valuation would probably not be made by 

 the assessor in the manner just described. Instead of determining the rate of 

 growth scientifically and applying it annually, he now makes an ocular reappraise- 

 ment at considerable intervals. In most cases there is no increased value, for the 

 land does not reforest but is continually reburned. Where it accidentally does 

 reforest, he makes a rough calculation of the value of the second growth, based 

 upon no particular system and seldom alike in dififerent counties. But the princi- 

 ple remains the same and the result differs only in degree. The land owner, instead 

 of being encouraged to establish and protect a new forest, is actually penalized, 

 for he must assume that its expectation value will be taxed annually, perhaps on 

 an exorbitant basis, as soon as it becomes apparent. 



CHOICE OF REFORM METHODS 



IN considering which of the three fundamental plans of taxing new crops to 

 apply to the foregoing Pacific coast situation, we must analyze its elements of 

 difference from that outlined in the preliminary paragraph of our discussion of 

 eastern conditions. In the older parts of the United States the relative value of 

 any tract for forest production and for other uses is fairly well established, and 

 so is its taxable value. Such classification in many parts of the West would be 

 most conjectural. In a new and rapidly settling region, with land quality and 

 clearing costs both uncertain, it may be impossible to say whether land assessed at 

 $3 today will in five years be worth $10 for grazing, $50 for agriculture, or but 

 $2 for forest growing and nothing else. A pioneer community, especially if poor 

 in any other taxable wealth, is more dependent on an annual land tax than one 

 already provided with roads and schools. A region still rich in forests is less 

 likely to forego a present tax in favor of a future population than one which 

 already feels the pinch of shortage. One in which neither forest science nor 

 adequate market has developed exact information about growth of the crop or 

 price it will bring cannot deal so exactly by statute; therefore safety from error 

 requires leaving more to future study and experience. One where fire hazard is 

 greatest must depend least upon the yield tax. 



While the measure we have previously outlined as suggestive for eastern con- 

 ditions would also be good in the West if it could be passed and maintained for a 



