258 MISC. PUBLICATION 218, U. 8S. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE 
3 stating that it had little or no effect. Some of these statements 
follow (67th Cong., 4th sess., hearing pursuant to S. Res. 398): 
W.S. F. Tatum of the Tatum Lumber Co., Hattiesburg, Miss., 
told the committee (p. 136): 
I am frank to say that if the board of supervisors continue to increase and levy 
taxes on the small timber like they have for the last few years we will be forced to 
get out from under that burden. 
Landon C. Bell, representing the Hardwood Manufacturers’ 
Institute of Columbus, Ohio, told the committee (p. 186): 
Timber should not be taxed annually as forest properties are taxed, because 
that has a tendency to make a man who otherwise might endeavor to keep and 
conserve his timber operate it, even to a lower diameter limit than otherwise, in 
order to get what he can out of it and be relieved from this burden of taxation. 
It is necessary, according to W. R. Sattersfield of the Chicago Mill 
& Lumber Co., Memphis, Tenn. (p. 536), to cut all trees down to 
8 inches in the hardwood bottom lands, on account of the taxes. 
George D. Oliver, a lumberman of San Francisco, stated (p. 657) 
that his company had no complaint to make against the existing State 
laws with respect to taxation. 
C. S. Chapman, then of the Western Forestry and Conservation 
Association, stated (p. 1335): 
There should be a modification of the present system of taxing privately owned 
land held for a second crop of timber to encourage reforestation by landowners. 
This should not, however, be in any way confused with taxation as applied to 
timber at present merchantable. 
W. B. Greeley, then Chief of the United States Forest Service, in 
criticizing a proposed optional immature tree value exemption plan 
of forest taxation for Oregon and outlining a compulsory bare-land 
tax and yield-tax law, stated (p. 505): 
Undoubtedly the present merchantable timber in a State like Oregon should 
continue to pay an ad valorem property tax until it is cut. A general tax plan 
such as that outlined should be applied to cut-over lands or lands containing 
scattered merchantable timber or immature forest growth. Thelaw might specify 
that the special tax plan should apply to all acres containing less than some speci- 
ae footage per acre so as to automatically exclude stands of high merchantable 
value. 
The yield tax has been generally advocated as the method of taxing 
forests which would best remove the urge to liquidate prematurely. 
Some further light on the question of the effect of taxation upon 
cutting policy is shed by the answers to an inquiry sent by the Na- 
tional Lumber Manufacturers Association for the Timber Conserva- 
tion Board in 1931 to a select list of 41 timber owners. The purpose 
of this inquiry was to secure comments on: 
1. The probable effects on timber ownership and lumber produc- 
tion in the States in which they are interested of the substitution of 
an optional yield tax for the annual property tax on mature timber, 
i. e., a choice between continuing on the annual property-tax basis 
and a yield tax, and 
2. The character and extent of financial assistance probably neces- 
sary in these States to enable the State and local governments to meet 
current fiscal needs in case the yield tax was substituted wholly or in 
part for the annual property tax on mature standing timber. 
The yield tax was found to be by no means in universal favor. 
Of the 19 replies received, which discussed the first point, 10 preferred 
the yield tax and 9 either preferred the property tax to the yield tax 
