13 



in forty years. It will be a man's tendency, as it was mine when I 

 began this work, to think of forty ^^ears as a very long time, a period 

 beyond ordinary calculation, hardly worth while to figure on. Never- 

 theless, if I interpret the economic tendenc\^ of the countr}^ at all 

 rig'hth^, men look farther ahead now than they once did, and it is very 

 well worth their while to do so. We will say that in forty years you 

 can get a second crop on that land equal to the first. We take the 

 stumpage at its present value, with taxes as they now stand, and we 

 estimate the expense of protection against fire and theft. We find in 

 this particular case that the returns on the capital invested for those 

 forty 3'ears is 6 per cent net. That is calculated on the basis of the 

 present value of stumpage. We all know that the value of stumpage 

 will increase largely in forty years. The matter becomes, then, simply 

 a question of whether or not it is worth your while to take the inci- 

 dental risks and hold your land for f ort}^ years rather than to put your 

 money into something else. But it is not a question of whether j^ou 

 will put the money back into your land after taking the timber ofi' of 

 it, but whether 3'ou will take the timber ofi* in such a way that Avhen 

 3^ou have cut over the land it will be in condition to go on producing 

 timber without further expense. Either the timber land is part of the 

 manufacturing plant, or it is not, and that is the whole difierence. 



If 3^ou are the owner of a mill, as of course you all are, 3^ou must 

 necessaril}^ consider, if 3^ou want to keep that mill in permanent oper- 

 ation, how much land you need to grow timber to supplj^ 3'ou with 

 your daily cut. Then 3^ou have a complete plant which is like a 

 machine shop, turning out material for its own needs. From the 

 point of view of the forester, where a business question is as clear cut 

 as that, it becomes as foolish to destro}^ the productive capacit}^ of 

 your land as it would be for the owner of a machine shop, when he had 

 an order for a shaft or a cog wheel, to take that shaft or cog wheel out 

 of his own machiner}^ and sell it rather than make his machines pro- 

 duce it. As I have said, and repeat, this is purely a business question. 



The Bureau of Forestry ofiers certain assistance to lumbermen in 

 preparing the basis upon which such questions can be most intelli- 

 gentl}^ decided. What it does is simply to put a certain amount of 

 trained skill at 3^our command. You pay the expense and we prepare 

 for you the necessary figures. The wa^^ we do it is to send a man to 

 the spot who finds out what there is on the ground, with special 

 reference to the smaller sizes — how fast each diameter class of trees 

 grows, how much will be left of certain sizes after cutting out others, 

 and how much will be standing to the acre after a definite numbei* of 

 years. We put the thing purel}^ and entirely on a business basis. 



These methods of forestiy are not at present as fully applicable 

 everywhere in the United States as the^^ will be later on, and it is as 

 far from me as possible to want to urge any man to adopt the methods 



