TAX LANDS AND FORESTRY. 31 



pick and choose as a mere investor of money is; the incidental benefit 

 rather than the direct money profit is the controlling inducement. 



TAXATION OF FOREST GROWTH WHERE LAND IS UNDER PROCESS OF 



REFORESTATION. 



Individual effort, however, cannot be relied upon to aid in any large 

 way while taxation remains as at present, because our present tax laws 

 make it impossible to see a reasonable profit in forest raising under 

 present conditions. 



Under the law, as interpreted, and the practice followed generally 

 (so far as there is sufficient consistency in the action of assessing officers 

 to warrant use of this word) forest raising is impossible as a com- 

 mercial venture, because, if the assessing officers do their duty and tax 

 annually what the law directs them to tax, the result must be the con- 

 fiscation of all the puoflt within the period of years necessary to grow 

 a tree from the seed to maturity. This is not from intention, but be- 

 cause the system of taxation in vogue does not conform to the facts nor 

 recognize the inherent natural and unchangeable differences that, for 

 purposes of taxation, distinguish forest growth from all other forms of 

 property, and make it a separate and distinct class. 



A forest property must always consist of two things, the land and 

 the forest growth. The land should be taxed as unimproved land, the 

 same as any other land of like nature in the same locality. The im- 

 provement on it, the forest growth, should be taxed annually, but ac- 

 cording to a system of taxation recognizing its inherent conditions and 

 characteristics: The question is not merely whether the forest growth 

 is a crop, or whether it is personal property, or real estate. The real 

 matter of importance is that its inherent natural characteristics, and 

 the conditions affecting it, are radically different from those of other 

 kinds of property. Whether the law recognizes the fact or not, it is 

 in its essence a distinct class by itself. This will appear from a brief 

 consideration of well-known facts. The increase of forests comes only 

 through a /process, of natural growth, by which annually a small ring 

 is formed within the bark and about the heart of the tree. This ring 

 must stand until the tree reaches the age or size agreed upon as that 

 of productive maturity. This, of course, is a variable point, and more 

 or less arbitrary. The ring, meanwhile, can not be taken away for use 

 by the owner, or be put to any purpose, as other personal property can 

 be. It earns nothing for the owner. It does not increase in size. It is 

 forced to stand idle. It is a source of expense for protection from dis- 

 ease, insects and fire. It is misleading to speak of it as invested capital, 

 or invested income. It is not invested, because it is earning nothing 

 and paying no returns. It is stored. The only beneficial use of it 

 is that which enures to the public from having forest areas. If we 

 assume that the average period of productive maturity is eighty years, 

 the first of the annual rings of year growth will have before it an en- 

 forced period of idleness of seventy-nine years. The next year's growth 

 will be stored in like way, seventy-eight years, and so on. At the end 

 of eighty years there will be eighty of these rings. If taxes are levied 

 annually meanwhile on the cash value of these rings as they are year by 

 year accumulated, the result will be that, when the tree arrives at this 



