28 



Mississippi's forest resources and industries 



NORTH 



CENTRAL 



SOUTH 



DELTA 



[GOOD AND 

 I EXCELLENT 



POOR 



FAIR 



o 



VERY POOR 

 AND DESTRUCTIVE 



Figure. 28. — Management rating of privately owned forest 

 by region, 1947^8. 



The largest class of private forest landowners — both 

 in numbers and area held — is that of farmers, as 

 shown by the following tabulation: 



Cotton, general, and cotton-vegetable 

 farmer 



Other farmer 



Businessman, housewife, wage earner, 

 and professional worker 



Lumber company 



Pulp company 



.Sawmill owner-farmer 



Concentration-yard owner 



Other forest industry 



Real estate company and land specu- 

 lator 



Miscellaneous 



Total 145.8 



1 Fewer than 50 owners in the class. 



Privatf ownersh 



p of commercial 



forest 



land 





Number 



»/ 







owners 





Land 



area 



(thousands) 



(million 



acres') 



77 



4 





4.4 



16 



1 





2.6 



48. 



3 





5.1 





1 





1.2 



0) 







.5 



1. 



7 





.3 



(>) 







.2 



0) 







.1 





4 





.1 



1. 



8 





.3 



14.8 



Some 93.5 thousand farmers, most of them cotton and 

 general farmers, own 7.0 million acres of forest. 



Next in importance are the 48.3 thousand business- 

 men, housewives, wage earners, and professional 

 workers who own 5.1 million acres of forest land. 

 Most prominent among the other classes of owners 

 are the forest-products concerns, whose combined 

 holdings contain 2.3 million acres of forest. 



Significant differences in the degree of timber man- 

 agement practiced by various classes of forest land- 

 owners are shown in figure 29. The large mass of 

 owners in the class of businessmen, housewives, wage 

 earners, and professional workers and the "other 

 farmer" class follows management practices quite 

 similar to the average for all owners. The very large 

 group of cotton and general farmers, however, is well 

 below the average : four-tenths of their forest holdings 

 are under very poor or destructive management. 



As a group, timber-products concerns have much 

 better than average management, but the group in- 

 cludes classes with some of the worst management as 

 well as classes with some of the best. Pulp companies 

 have distinctly the best management of any class of 

 owners. Virtually all of the pulp company land in 

 Mississippi is under at least fair management, and 

 six-tenths of the acreage rates good or excellent. 



Lumber companies, as a class, are in the middle of 

 the forest-industry scale. Even the large lumber com- 

 panies have only a fourth of their acreage under good 

 or excellent management. As for the small lumber 

 companies, the best that can be said is that their 

 average is near the average for all owners: manage- 

 ment on more than eight-tenths of their forest land is 

 rated poor or worse. At the lower end of the forest- 

 industry scale are the concentration-yard owners 

 and those small sawmill owners who are also 

 farmers. These classes are characterized by very poor 

 management. 



The remaining classes of owners — real estate com- 

 panies and land speculators and miscellaneous owners 

 (including, prominently, undivided estates) — gener- 

 ally have very poor management practices. 



Controls Over Cutting and Fire 



The kind of private timber management practiced 

 in Mississippi can be traced, to a large extent, to efforts 

 to control cutting and fire made by the forest land- 

 owners and the State government. 



Supervision of Cuttirii; 



Supervision of logging operations to insure that 

 logging follows silvicultural principles or, at least, that 



