~ CONSERVATIVE LOGGING. ~ 19° 
for timber of the same kind and quality on private forest lands. It 
was logged and manufactured by the lumbermen who bought it, and 
sold by them in the open market, in competition with lumber cut from 
private forest lands under wasteful methods. In 1907 the Federal 
Government was asked by lumbermen to sell at good prices, from 
National Forests, several times as much timber as it sold. That it 
did not make more timber sales was partly because the force on Na- 
tional Forests was not large enough to handle them. But if lumber- 
men can, with profit, buy timber at what it is worth from the forest 
lands of the people, and log it conservatively, they can do at least as 
well with their own. 
Part of the waste in logging is unavoidable under present condi- 
tions. The following discussion deals specifically with those items 
of waste which it is practicable to avoid now, often with higher im- 
mediate profit to the owner of the land from which the timber is cut, 
and always with higher permanent profit from the land itself after it 
is cut over the first time. 
Care for young growth.—The loss to the value of the forest, 
through injury to young growth in logging, is larger than the waste 
of merchantable timber. A small part of this damage is unavoidable. 
Nearly all of it is avoidable without materially increasing the cost of 
logging. It costs no more money to fell a tree uphill than to damage 
young growth by felling it downhill. It does not cost much to release 
young trees bent over by the tops of felled trees. More logging roads, 
skidding paths, and snake trails than are really needed kill much 
_ young growth, and they do not make for cheap logging. Rolling logs 
down hill is seldom necessary, and it often breaks down young trees 
which are worth more than the log is worth to the lumberman who 
means to hold his cut-over land or to the men to whom he sells it. 
Young trees are worth at least as much as it costs to replace them, or 
about $10 an acre; and $10 an acre spent in forest planting will seldom 
give us as good a forest as nature will grow for us, if we will take 
care of the young growth. 
Leaving seed trees—How many and what seed trees to leave, and 
where, depends on the cost of logging, on the character of the forest, 
and on the power of its most valuable trees to reproduce themselves. 
There are no general rules which apply to all forests. It is seldom 
necessary to leave prime timber as trees for seed. Unsound trees 
which will probably live long enough to seed up the area, scrubby 
trees already bearing seed, but unfit for lumber, and thrifty trees too 
small to be logged with the highest profit now, generally serve the 
purpose well. 
The lumberman who claims that it does not pay to leave seed trees 
ta shed seed, or to take care of young trees, because we may not live 
[Cir. 171] 
