3IO REPORT OF THE FOREST, FISH AND GAME .COMMISSIONER. 



based, naturally, on a comparison between forest revenue and revenues 

 obtainable from other investments. 



The investor stakes his money on that enterprise in which he has the 

 greatest confidence; and it is usual that the farmer puts his money in 

 farms; the miner in mines; the railroad man in railroad stock; and the 

 lumberman in forests. 



The American lumberman is apt to consider investments in forestry 

 (be it destructive or conservative) as ideal investments; outsiders are not 

 prone to share his view. 



As long as this country abounds in merchantable woods, the lumberman 

 has an easy chance, after exhausting the stumpage on a given tract com- 

 pletely, to shift his capital to another tract, purchasing the stumpage 

 thereon out of the moneys obtained by his operations conducted on the 

 preceding tract. Usually, he prefers, for obvious reasons, the purchase of 

 timber to the purchase of the forest in fee simple. Under such conditions, 

 the lumberman cannot be interested in the production of second growth, 

 nor in operations merely withdrawing trees working at a small rate of 

 revenue. 



The owners of the fee simple — farmers, townsfolks, aliens — do not 

 command any knowledge of forest investments; having paid the taxes on 

 the land for a number of years without any returns, they embrace readily 

 the first chance at obtaining " big returns." These big returns usually 

 exceed the price by far at which the land was bought. Nevertheless, and 

 just as usually, such "big returns" are a mere pittance. 



The Forest Service of the United States has before it an enormous task : 

 the task of proving to the owners of woodlands, who are ignorant of present 

 and of prospective values of timber, the advisability of conservative 

 lumbering. 



Unfortunately, there do not exist anywhere associations of forest 

 owners through which the members might be enlightened. 



^stained *Iteld ("Possibility") 



Normally, the " sustained yield " of the forest is that number of 

 cubic feet of wood which nature produces in the forest annually ; the annual 



