36 BULLETIN 1496, U. 8S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
on to more intensive practice to offset their burden. The main 
obstacle to the practice of forestry in this country is the mental 
attitude which fails to regard the forest as a permanent, crop-pro- 
ducing entity and which takes no cognizance of the possible profits 
in permanent forestry as compared with the destructive “mining” 
of timber from forested land. 
Practical forestry should not consist in starting with cut-over and 
ruined lands and planting new forests which will not be ready to 
harvest for 100 or 200 years. Such forestry will seldom be profitable 
to any private owner. It is an enterprise which only the State or 
National Government can undertake. 
Forestry in the old countries, and the same will be true in this 
country, began almost entirely with tracts of existing forests man- 
aged for continuous production. This involves handling the old 
stands so as to prolong their life and insure their reproduction and 
at the same time stocking up the cut-over land in such a way that 
the whole forest is able to sustain in continuous operation some wood- 
using plant of efficient size. It necessitates reforestation as the 
mature timber is removed, taking advantage of the young growth 
that has sprung up on the cut-over land, improving it and possibly 
pine here and there the blank acres which nature has failed to 
restock. 
The practice of forestry, therefore, should particularly appeal to 
timber owners who have standing timber sufficient to keep their 
plants going until the young growth is ready to supply raw material. 
If there is not enough old timber left, what remains should be con- 
served as far as possible by buying logs until the annual growth of 
the forest in question is equal to the needs of the operation. 
Under destructive logging, where the old timber is removed with- 
out regard to the future of the forest, the only return that the timber 
owner gets is from the increase in the market price of the stumpage 
and the land. Under permanent-forest practice there are returns 
from at least three other sources: (1) Increase in the volume of the 
timber through growth, (2) increase in the quality of the timber 
as the young timber increases in size, and (3) decrease in the de- 
esr of the plant and equipment through the extension of their 
life. 
An authority® on bond investment states: “There is probably no 
material, not even gold itself, which has future value in exchange 
more assured than wood. Lumber value has had no material set- 
backs in the past 20 years at least; and the tendency has been con- 
stantly upward.” 
Experience in the Lake States shows that stumpage prices for 
the three typical hardwood species—beech, yellow birch, and hard 
maple—increased on an average 21 cents each year for the period 
between 1900 and 1924, and aspen increased at the rate of 5 cents 
per year during the period from 1910 to 1924. The period of great- 
est annual increase in stumpage for beech, birch, and maple was 
between 1919 and 1924, as may be seen from Table 7. 
5 CHAMBERLAIN, LAWRENCE, THE PRINCIPLES OF BOND INVESTMENT. New York. 1927. 
