EVERGREENS FOR PROFIT. ' 1 7 



a young man can have no better life insurance, much safer 

 than the great institutions in the grasp of frenzied financiers. 

 You need not wait very long for assured returns. You see 

 them growing and they are valuable assets. In the Nebraska 

 sandhills in fifteen years Jack pines made a growth at the rate 

 of thirteen cords to the acre. No one would cut them at that 

 stage. But there was the actual value — $40 worth of wood to 

 the acre in fifteen years. They are costing nothing. They 

 just rent the land and do all the work, you simiply look on and 

 they will pay you a rental of four to five dollars a. year. So in 

 lime you or your children will get so much per acre from land 

 which, unimproved, would not be worth $5.00 per acre. The 

 United States government, taking this matter in hand, has 

 now commenced planting an immense reserve of hundreds of 

 acres with every assurance of success. Many portions of 

 Europe, which were nothing but drifting sands, are now bear- 

 ing grand forests of conifers. How can a young man make 

 surer, safer provision for his children or for old age than by 

 planting trees? If the timber lands of the North had been kept 

 from" fires, there might have been a continual harvest every few 

 years by cutting out the larger trees and saving the smaller 

 ones. 



It takes about 1000 Jack Pmes to plant an acre, and these 

 set down will cost about $4.00. Surely not a large outlay con- 

 sidering the future which lies before them. The money a man 

 pays to insure his life, if laid out judiciously in tree planting, 

 would bring in gi'eater and surer returns. A good healthy tree 

 knows how to figure a high rate of interest. Remember that 

 lumber is going to be much higherinthe future than now. When 

 I was a boy we used to buy fencing in Chicago for $5.00 per 

 1000 feet. Such times are past forever. I have known men to 

 build fine houses almost entirely fromi trees they had planted 

 twenty-five years before. 



There is nothing visionary or chimerical about this proposi- 

 tion of tree planting. In Kansas there is a grove of Austrian 

 Pines twenty-five years old, that would turn out a good deal 

 of lumber. The amount of evergreen planting in the west has 

 been ridiculously smell, and yet what little has been done gives 

 encouragement to go on on a larger scale. While the most bar- 

 ren and unproductive lands can be made beautiful 'and profitable 

 by planting them, the richest lands would bring in much larger 

 returns. So plant evergreens. Remember that beauty is wealth, 

 and when a piece of brown earth is covered with forests of that 

 deep, rich green which retains its freshness summer and winter, 

 the view is a perpetual delight. 



Then these groves arrest the fury of the storms, check the 

 hot winds and stop the fearful evaporation they cause, and in 

 this way protect the land. You cannot estimate the indirect 

 value of whole sections planted to Ponderosa Pines out on the 



