200 MISC. PUBLICATION 218, U. 8. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE 
rural real estate (they are not personal property and they are rarely 
found in cities), it was considered of especial interest to determine, 
where possible, the relation of the assessed value of forests to the 
assessed value of rural real estate. For this purpose an effort was 
made to eliminate from the total tax base as much property as pos- 
sible which was not strictly of the nature of rural real estate. In 
some cases a fairly complete segregation could be made, with the aid 
of the reports of the various State tax commissions, but in other cases 
it was possible to eliminate only the assessed value of property in the 
large cities. Thus, it must be kept in mind that the term “ural real 
estate’’ as used in this section sometimes includes more or less urban 
and suburban property. 
ALL STATES OF THE UNITED STATES 
The importance of forests in the tax base of all States and of the 
United States as a whole is given in table 67. The assessed value of 
forests was determined by estimating roughly the value of forests and 
reducing this estimated value to assessed value by means of ratios 
of assessed value to full value. The assessed values of all property 
and of rural real estate were derived from the Statistical Abstract of 
the United States and from Bureau of the Census data. The method 
in detail is as follows: 
The basic estimates for approximating the assessed value of forests as given in 
table 67 are contained in table 68. The second column of table 68 is an estimate 
of the area of privately owned forest land. The term “forest land’’, in connection 
with this estimate, refers to the so-called commercial forest land, meaning land 
bearing present timber stands that could be economically utilized and also other 
forest land on which present or future timber stands can be utilized under reason- 
ably conceivable future conditions. Column 3 is the estimated average unit land 
value of the area in column 2, including value of young growth, if any, but exclud- 
ing saw timber and cordwood. Columns 4 to 6 are estimates of the quantity of 
saw timber and cordwood, including pulpwood, standing on this land. The unit 
stumpage values in columns 7 to 9 of this table are averages of prices received in 
all classes of sales during the years 1923 to 1928 with adjustments in some cases 
to harmonize apparent inconsistencies due to the small number of sales. These 
years were used as more representative of normal conditions than the later years. 
For the most part these sales involved timber which was available at the time of 
the sale for immediate or early conversion. Only a small part of all the timber 
existing in 1929 was so available. These unit values could not properly be applied 
to estimates representing all of the standing timber in order to cbtain the value 
of that timber unless it were assumed that the carrying charges on timber which 
would not be utilized for many years would be counterbalanced by increases due 
to growth and higher stumpage prices. It is more in keeping with the practice 
of buyers and sellers, as evidenced by the unit prices realized in the occasional 
sales of very large tracts, to reduce the average stumpage prices of table 68 in order 
to estimate the present worth of standing timber in 1929. The selection of the 
reduction factor is a matter of judgment, and, in view of the many uncertainties, 
any attempt at refined adjustment in these ratios between the different States 
would be pointless. In all of the Eastern and Central States except Maine 25 
percent was used. In Maine and in the Rocky Mountain and Pacifie Coast 
States 40 percent was used with two exceptions, namely, Oregon 50 percent and 
New Mexico 60 percent. The estimated value of forests, column 2, table 67, was 
obtained by applying these reduction factors to the gross value of stumpage com- 
puted from columns 4 to 9 of table 68 and adding to the resulting timber value 
the land value computed from columns 2 and 3 of table 68. The estimated value 
per acre of forests, column 3, table 67, computed from column 2 of table 67 and 
column 2 of table 68, is given to facilitate comparison between the States. 
