322 



FORESTS 



FORESTS 



I Fig. 453. 



Rea cedar 



{Juniperus 



Virginiana). 



Fig. 454. 



Hemlock (Tauga 



Oanad^nais). 



duce under forest management of similar intensity, 

 between 400,000 and 600,000 pounds of useful 

 vegetable substance, or ten times as much. These 

 figures, of course, must not be consid- 

 ered, even for a moment, as absolute. 

 To begin with, the average acreage of 

 farm land cultivated by one man, as 

 given by the Census, is altogether too 

 large, since not all land that has been 

 reported as improved farm land is 

 actually cultivated, — a great part of 

 it remains idle. These figures are 

 merely brought forward to illustrate 

 approximately the relative role which 

 labor plays in the production of wood and of agri- 

 cultural products.' 



Capital, 



Wood-cropping, to be done continuously, needs 

 investment of capital, and, in a certain sense, of a 

 larger capital than is re- 

 quired for farming. The 

 form in which most of the 

 capital is tied up in wood- 

 cropping is very charac- 

 teristic of forestry as an 

 industry. It is not the 

 land that claims most of the investment, since land 

 devoted to forest growth is, as a rule, poorer and 

 therefore has a considerably lower value than farm 

 land. Nor do buildings, 

 tools, machinery or labor 

 absorb much capital, be- 

 cause all these items are 

 a source of considerably 

 less expenditure in for- 

 estry than in farming. 

 ,> , « ^fv^^'i , \ The forest crops do not 



Balsam UT {Abies balsamea). 11.11. , 1 



need buildmgs to house 

 them ; the tools used in harvesting or caring for 

 the harvest are very simple and inexpensive ; the 

 application of machinery, with its concentration 

 and division of labor, is very circumscribed because 

 of the bulkiness of the product, 

 and because variety in the size 

 and shape of trees requires the 

 constant exercise of judgnjent 

 on the part of the wood-cutter ; 

 there are no seeds nor manure 

 to buy ; very little wages need 

 be paid. In other words, the 

 capital needed for defraying the 

 current expenses of growing 

 wood-crops is small as compared 

 to that needed for raising agricultural crops. Thus, 

 while in Europe the current expenditure per acre 

 of forest land managed most intensively does not 

 exceed two dollars on the average, 

 according to the figures of the 

 United States De- 

 partment of 

 Agriculture for 

 1893, the cost of 

 Fig. 457. "'VT'V raising wheat 

 Black spruce {Fice'a Mariana). and corn crops 



Fig. 456. 

 Norway spruce 

 {Picea excelsa). 



in this country was $8.88 and $8.68, respectively, 

 not including the rent for land and the cost for 

 superintendence. 



The chief demand for capital in continuous 

 wood-cropping is the necessity of keeping a large 

 supply of growing, immature trees on hand. Here- 

 in is the most essential difference between forestry 

 and agriculture : while farm crops mature in one 

 year, and all that has grown during the year is 

 harvested at the end of the season, trees must be 

 left to grow for many years before sufficient wood 

 of the desired kind accumulates. A tree is not 

 born old; starting from the seed or stump, it 

 grows in height and thickness year after year 

 until it reaches the size required for the market. 

 If the most marketable size is attained at the age 

 of eighty years, then to secure the best returns it 

 must be left on the ground for eighty years to 

 accumulate the requisite amount of wood. If one 

 eighty-year-old tree is to be cut each year, there 

 must be on hand seventy-nine trees of ages 

 varying from one to seventy-nine years. When 

 one eighty-year-old tree is cut down, seventy-nine 

 trees must be left standing, because they are all 

 needed to produce annually that one mature tree. 

 Continuous wood-cropping requires, therefore, an 

 accumulation of a large amount of immature, 

 growing timber, which forms as essential an ele- 

 ment in continuous wood-production as machinery 

 does in a factory. While the farmer may dispose 

 of the products of his annual harvest, the grower 

 of timber crops is compelled to leave the annual 

 growth made by the trees for a number of years, 

 and in this way must tie up in growing trees a 

 capital equal to the aggregate value of the unsold 

 annual crops of the whole period. That the grow- 

 ing, still immature timber is a real capital and not 

 an imaginary one, is only too well shown by the 

 temptation to which so many owners of small 

 timber tracts succumb, to realize on it prematurely 

 by selling it at the first opportunity. 



The larger the required sizes of trees, or the 

 longer the period needed for their maturing, the 

 larger must be the stock of young, growing trees 

 on hand, and consequently the larger must be the 

 capital tied up for continuous production of wood, 

 and vice versa. Thus, to supply continually an 

 annual demand for the product of one acre of 

 eighty-year-old trees, a total area of eighty acres 

 is needed ; while one-fourth of the area would be 

 sufliicient to grow every year one acre of twenty- 

 year-old trees, such as would make fence-posts. 



In forests managed systematically for continuous 

 timber crops, tlie growing stock of wood usually 

 amounts to 75 or 80 per cent of the total invest- 

 ment. For this reason, the raising of continuous 

 crops of large timber for construction purposes 

 can be done advantageously only on considerable 

 forest areas, with a large capital tied up perma- 

 nently in young, growing trees. The owner of a 

 small woodlot will inevitaby find it most profitable 

 to raise chiefly fire-wood, mine props, fence-posts, 

 ties, and similar timber products that require a 

 comparatively short time for their production, 

 using for that purpose only quick-growing species, 



