144 REPORT OF THE FORESTRY COMMITTEE 



taxation might be helped some, or we should at least look into the question of 

 acquiring State lands by exemption of taxation along practical lines. 



I do not believe any State will take care of all the cut-over lands in it. As to 

 the purpose of acquiring State forests in a located area, it is well worth looking 

 into. The details of the whole debate on this forest taxation subject are many. 

 As I say, it is a big one, but after all I am only a member of the committee and the 

 Chairman is not here and Professor Fairchild is not here, and it is mighty easy 

 to tangle me upon it. We have a good many people who have been thinking on 

 this question, Doctor Drinker and Doctor Rothrock among them, and I would 

 be glad to have a question asked of those people who are trying those things in 

 their State. 



Mr. W. R. Brown, of New Hampshire: I was very much interested in one 

 point Mr. Allen brought out, and that is what we can do at the present time in 

 regard to taxes, and in looking into this matter in New Hampshire we found out 

 that the question of the survey of land, the running of lines, the determination of 

 the timber on the land, the way by which timber should be scaled at the present 

 time and in the future, that the determination of that scale and the continuance 

 of a scale were fundamental questions which would have a great deal to do with 

 the taxation question, whatever system we might adopt in the future. In look- 

 ing over our small State of New Hampshire we found if we made these surveys 

 and estabhshed lines and determined the amount of timber in our State, it would 

 cost about $1,000,000 to do that in one year, so -any reasonable system of taxation 

 ought to take into consideration the determination of areas and of values and of 

 the scale rule which will last during the time. This is one thing which we can 

 do to begin with: We can get the State to take up this work, we can get the 

 towns to determine their land and what they have, and we can get it in shape 

 for taxation which will come later. 



Mr. T. B. Walker, of Minnesota: The thing that should be appropriate and 

 proper would be to limit the unfair, unjust, frontier custom of increasing con- 

 tinuously the system of taxation until it becomes confiscatory of the value of 

 timber in the course of years. Let it always be understood that the lumberman, 

 in providing for the establishment of lumber mills, must provide a tax of timber 

 large enough to last him from thirty to fifty or one hundred years. A lumber 

 plant is a very expensive thing; it costs a large sum and the money invested in it 

 must be returned and the money invested in the timber must be returned with 

 the carrying charges of interest and taxes. This charge of interest and taxes 

 doubles the value of stumpage every eight or nine years, so that when most men 

 who have entered into the lumber business to a large extent in past years have 

 started in with a valuation in the timber of at least $2 a thousand, and even that 

 would be larger than the stumpage value charged by the State or Ijy the Govern- 

 ment, in eight or nine years that value is $4, in another nine years it is $8 ; then 

 it is $16, and when it arrives at the point of 55 years, which is about the minimum 

 time in which a milHng plant can be established with any prospect of success in 

 the enterprise, it will take not less than 55 years, or perhaps the expected life of 

 the person establishing it. At that rate the stumpage runs up at the end of that 

 time, by means of these carrying charges for taxes and interest, and you would 

 have to pay $120 a thousand for the lumber in the course of 55 years. Speaking 

 of this question of confiscation by taxation and interest charges, we also have to 

 bear in mind that the lumber men, as a general proposition, have had to pass an 

 excess rate of interest on money that they use in business. If the lumberman 

 had sufficient money of his own he did not have to be a lumber man. Ninety 

 out of one hundred who have gone into the lumber business in the ^^^est have 

 gone into bankruptcy. 



Mr. Arthur Goadby, of New York: Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen : I think 

 the subject that has been opened up this afternoon will cause you to realize that 



