366 MISC. PUBLICATION 218, U. 8. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE 
the yield-tax movement, which had been engaging the attention of 
the profession for fully a decade and had been the subject of two inves- 
tigations conducted under the direction of the United States Forest 
Service, the first by Alfred Gaskill in 1904 and the second and more 
comprehensive by Fred R. Fairchild, of Yale University, in 1909, as 
previously noted. The report of this Connecticut commission (183) 
contained among other things a discussion and outline of legislation 
recommended by the commission and an additional contribution by 
Professor Fairchild on forest taxation in Europe. 
THE RECENT STATE LEGISLATION 
There follows a description of the legislation which grew out of 
these various preliminary yield-tax discussions and investigations 
which have been recounted. These State laws are arranged chrono- 
logically according to the time each State enacted its first yield-tax 
law, although subsequent enactments in the same State are discussed 
before taking up the laws of another State. 
The Michigan act of April 25, 1911 (S. L. 135, p. 195), was almost 
a verbatim copy of the 1899 Indiana $1-an-acre assessment law, to 
which was added a provision imposing Hubbell’s cutting tax, the latter 
having since come universally to be called a yield tax. T he points of 
departure of this law from its Indiana prototype were all on the side 
of restricting its application. Thus the area that could be set aside 
by the owner as a private forest reserve could not exceed one-eighth 
of a tract of 160 acres; furthermore half of the main tract had to be 
improved and devoted to agriculture. The rate of yield tax estab- 
lished by this law was 5 percent. Thus the first of this new type of 
forest-tax legislation, which was thereafter to claim and hold public 
attention for a generation or more, fell far short of the complete 
program advanced at the inception of the campaign 20 years earlier. 
Michigan followed its initial law with two others after considerable 
intervals. The first of these, the act of April 17, 1917 (S. L. 86, p. 
155), resembled so closely the general make-up of the initial one that 
it was generally accepted as a mere refinement of it and intended to 
repeal and replace it. However, both laws are given in full in the 
Compiled Laws, 1929 (see secs. 5735 to 5757). In 1925 Michigan 
broadened its treatment of the subject by passage of the act of 
April 24, 1925 (S. L. 94, p. 126), which provides for applying the yield 
tax to commercial forest property. This act, which was patterned 
chiefly after the Pennsylvania 1913 law, has since thrice been amended, 
namely, by the acts of April 30 and June 2, 1927 (S. L. 86, p. 121, and 
390, -p: 855), and that of May 28, 1931 (S. Ai 199, p. 326). 
In point of time New York was the first State to follow the Michigan 
lead in yield-tax legislation. The phraseology of the legislation, 
however, gives no indication that New York followed Michigan in 
that respect. Quite the contrary, in fact. Nor do the State reports 
of that period indicate even the approximate origin of the movement, 
the subject being only rarely and casually mentioned. However, the 
Pennsylvania forestry report for the years 1912-13 (209, Rept. 1912- 18, 
pp. 23-24), in commenting on its own success in finally passing a 
yield-tax law after 6 years of ‘patient effort and education”, mentions 
that “the idea (embodied in that law or rather group of three laws) 
has been thought so good that it has been followed in the States of 
New York and Louisiana.” Thus, New York, although taking its 
