FOREST TAXATION IN THE UNITED STATES 361 
Before proceeding to chronicle the efforts of the several other 
States which pioneered the yield-tax movement along with Michigan, 
brief mention should be made of a number of individuals who helped 
to crystallize public sentiment on the subject prior to the publication 
of the Fairchild report. These were, in addition to those mentioned 
elsewhere, arranged according to the chronology of their first published 
contributions: C. A. Schenck, 1899; C. W. Weld, 1902; Ernest 
Bruncken, 1903; Alfred Akerman, 1905; D. H. Darling, 1907; C. H. 
Goetz, 1907; E. G. Cheyney, 1907; G. E. Ames, 1908; T. B. Walker, 
1908; and James B. White, 1908. 
Pennsylvania, although fifth in the order of actual enactment of a 
forest yield-tax law, was among the first of the Eastern States to 
consider such a step. Its earliest stirrings of record date from the 
publication in 1892 of Primer Series No. 3 by Joseph T. Rothrock, the 
State’s pioneer forester (210). This publication, by the way, is the 
earliest of record in the United States on the yield-tax idea. The 
legislative program that was finally successful in 1913 was first 
introduced in the 1907 session and at each intervening session there- 
after. The bills, of which there were three, were originally drafted 
by Simon B. Elliott, of the State Forestry Reservation Commission. 
Furthermore, Mr. Elliott had a contribution on the subject of forest 
taxation in the report of the State Department of Forestry for 1905-6 
(184), in which he advocated the separate taxation of land and timber, 
the land to continue subject to annual ad valorem taxation and the 
timber to be subject to a tax only when cut, at a rate of not over 2 
percent on its value. In a note appended to this article the author 
pointed out that Joseph T. Rothrock, the first commissioner of 
forestry, had anticipated him by many years in advocating such a 
tax plan in the report of the State Board of Agriculture for 1894 
(211). The 1905-6 report (209), in addition to Mr. Elliott’s article, 
refers to other sources which the department had found helpful in its 
consideration of this subject, as follows: The report of the committee 
on forest taxation authorized by the Massachusetts Legislature in 
1905 and the investigation made by Alfred Gaskill under the direction 
of the Federal Forest Service, which was incorporated in the paper 
on the yield tax which he presented before the Society of American 
Foresters in December 1904 (190). It is interesting to note, in this 
connection, that filed with the original Gaskill manuscript is a mime- 
ograph copy of a draft of An Act for the Taxation of Woodlands, pre- 
pared by the author, with the State of Pennsylvania used for ‘illus- 
tration. Furthermore several of the features original with this draft 
appear in the subsequent Pennsylvania bills and acts as finally passed. 
Massachusetts was also among the first to investigate the possibil- 
ities of getting away from the unsatisfactory exemption type of 
legislation. Delay in adopting the new principle, however, was 
doubtless attributable chiefly to the fact that, whereas the Massa- 
chusetts Constitution very closely circumscribed the legislative power 
concerning taxation, the constitutions of the States which enacted 
such laws with little delay gave their legislatures sufficient latitude to 
enable them to adopt the yield tax without first seeking a constitu- 
tional amendment. 
The very first report of Akerman, the first State forester of Massa- 
chusetts (177, Rept. 1, p. 6), covering the last 5 months of 1904, 
announced the fact that the subject was being considered but would 
