LOGGING PRACTICE IN THE LAKE STATES 3 
and showing what can be done once they are “sold” on growing 
timber. 
The second group of measures proposed constitute what may be 
called desirable forestry practice. They are designed to grow crops 
of the more valuable products and to use fully the productive 
capacity of the land. The recommendations embodied in this group 
of measures are addressed primarily to the landowner who wishes to 
get the most out of his property in real timber culture. 
It is impossible to formulate a set of measures of this character 
that would be adapted to the great variety of growth types and of 
industrial requirements found in the Lake States. Hence, Zon has 
simply outlined the more fundamental things, with illustrative 
methods of forest practice. The details of forestry, like the details 
of engineering, require expert study to determine the plans and 
methods adapted to a particular tract of land or a particular 
business. One of the most important features of forest planning 
is to devise not simply woods operations that will produce the most 
valuable crops of timber, but a program of land ownership and 
logging that will furnish a continuous yield of the products desired 
or a sustained supply of raw material for plant requirements. 
The opportunity afforded by such a program for a continuous 
inflow of timber is usually the soundest business or financial 
approach to forestry. To the extent that this continuous inflow of 
timber can be attained, stability is built into the entire structure of a 
wood-using industry. Plant investments, credit, merchandizing 
plans, and opportunities to develop by-products can often be recast 
on more secure and advantageous lines once this policy of raw-ma- 
terial supply is settled. Forestry often involves much more than 
what to do with a piece of land. It may be the key to the most 
fundamental features of a business. 
From this viewpoint, Zon’s common-sense presentation of the 
financial aspects of holding land for timber growth is particularly 
commendable. In the last 50 years American wood-using industries 
of many kinds have become accustomed to holding timber reserves 
behind their plants. They pay carrying charges on these reserve 
supplies—often for 20 or 30 years—as a matter of course in order 
to protect their plant investments and hold their trade. It is but 
a slight modification of the same principle to carry a reserve, not 
in the form of costly old-growth stumpage, but of growing forests 
sufficient in extent to mature from year to year the volume of wood 
required for manufacture. 
There are decided financial possibilities in this new form of timber 
reserve. A tract of virgin timber seldom improves in either quality 
or volume while it is being carried. It may deteriorate in one or 
both. Its value ordinarily becomes greater only as the stumpage 
prices of the region advance. But a tract of growing forest, if well 
protected, is attaining higher quality and greater volume every 
year. And it has the same opportunity as a virgin stand to share 
in a general enhancement of timber values. Broadly speaking, a 
growing forest has three chances to earn profit while a forest of old 
erowth has but one. And the cost of carrying it, figured per 
thousand feet or per cord coming to the mill, may be less than the 
a of an old-growth reserve when it reaches the manufacturing 
plant. 
