TAX LANDS AND FORESTRY. 95 



If the demand for wheat increases in relation to the available supply, 

 the price rises, the farmers sow a larger acreage, and presently the in- 

 creased demand has resulted in an increased supply. The same is true 

 of hogs and horses, or of any other commodity which may be reproduced 

 or even mined, except wood. This demand for wood has steadily and 

 tremendously increased decade by decade for upwards of a century. The 

 prices, notwithstanding the opening up of vast virgin forests which cost 

 man nothing to produce, have steadily risen, and during the last decade, 

 as exhaustion of supplies is seen in the distance, have very rapidly risen. 

 This rise in price has not yet resulted in an increased production of 

 wood, nor will it — judging from the history of nations — ever appreci- 

 ably increase the production of wood until the evils of a wood famine 

 have long been felt. On the contrary, although increased demand has 

 meant increased prices, increased prices have only meant increased har- 

 vesting, and increased harvesting has meant and still means in North 

 America that larger areas are annually cut more closely. This on ac- 

 count of the greater amount of debris left in the woods, leaves it in 

 a much worse condition for the all but inevitable after-lumbering fire, 

 which all too often leaves the land a waste, hence the net result of the 

 greater demand for wood products in the case of lands held in private 

 ownership is not an increased but a decreased production. 



(3) A third plea may well be entered for the removal of all re- 

 straint on the production of a commodity which, while so peculiarly in 

 a class by itself so far as regards the laws governing its production, is 

 without exception the most useful raw material of all manufacture, and 

 an indispensable agent in all production and transportation. Aside, in- 

 deed, from the character of its population, nothing contributes so much 

 to the material progress and happiness of a nation as an abundant 

 supply of timber at reasonable prices. 



How Should Our Future Forest Lands le Taxed? 



By S. B. Elliott, Member Pennsylvania State Forestry Eeservation 



Commission. 



Article IX, Sectiorf 1, of our State Constitution, provides that "all 

 taxes shall be uniform upon the same class of subjects." It is held 

 that, under this clause, land can not be exempted from taxation, save 

 where it shall be used for public purposes. This view is "certainly log- 

 ical and must be correct. 



There can be no truthful denial that the assessor of the past (and 

 he of the present time is of the same mind), persistently laid a heavy 

 valuation upon all land having growing or standing timber upon it, 

 and what he has been doing in the past he will be almost certain to 

 do in the future,, unless positively forbidden. 



Our legislature has endeavored to circumvent him to a certain extent 

 by providing for a rebate of taxes, not to exceed forty-five cents per 

 acre, on land which may have three hundred or more growing young 

 trees upon it, but he promptly puts that rebate out of action by in- 

 creasing the valuation on that or the remainder of the owner's holdings, 

 and in this it may be reasonably expected that the county commissioner 

 will uphold him. It must in some way be so fixed that it will be im- 



