PRIVATE rOEESTEY. 21 



These State forests represent a line of State action which has been 

 preeminently successful. As the table shows, New York leads the 

 States in State forest area, followed by Pennsylvania and Wiscon- 

 sin. The smaller attempts of Minnesota, Michigan, Connecticut, 

 Massachusetts, New Jersey, Indiana, etc., are all important. The 

 State forests speak for themselves. First, they furnish object lessons 

 of great value ; second, they form the nucleus of what some day must 

 be the principal center of State forest work. It is a fundamentally 

 sound policy for the State to own land, especially land which does 

 not offer the conditions necessary for prosperous settlement.^ 



PRIVATE FORESTRY. 

 THE INDUCEMENT TO PRACTICE FORESTRY. 



Three-fourths of all our forests are in private hands. These 

 private forests are, moreover, the best stocked; they contain four- 

 fifths of all the timber in the country. Clearly the bulk of the tim- 

 ber cut must come, for some time at least, from this area. Upon the 

 use of the forest growing upon it will depend whether future ^demands 

 for timber will be met or not. Very largely, therefore, the forest 

 problem is to be solved by private forestry — unless, indeed, private 

 owners fail to practice it on any considerable scale, in which case 

 public ownership may be invoked in the public interest. It is of 

 the greatest importance, then, to know the extent to which forestry 

 is now, and is likely to be, practiced on private lands. 



The area of private forest on which forestry is practiced at pres- 

 ent is not known and can only be roughly estimated. Probably it 

 is less than 1 per cent of the total area of private forests. As was 

 said in describing the cooperative work of the Forest Service, about 

 10,000,000 acres have been involved in the applications made to the 

 Service for advice in proper forest management. Actual work in 

 accordance with Service advice has been done on a substantial part 

 of the area. In but few cases, however, have complete working 

 plans been persistently carried out. The chief value of this work 

 has been its educational effect, which extends far beyond the forests 

 directly concerned. A valuable result thus secured is the better 

 general knowledge of the meaning and aims of forestry. Forestry 

 is now correctly understood to mean no mere sentimental plea for 

 regarding the forest as an ornament to the landscape, but a practical 

 plan for getting the best economic service out of the forest in the 



« Government publications dealing with State forestry are: The Progress of For- 

 estry in 1907; The Progress of Forestry in 1908; What the States Should Do to Per- 

 petuate the Forests, by Filibert Roth. (The latter is part of the report of the Na- 

 tional Conservation Commission, which is published as Senate document No. 676, and 

 can be obtained only through Members of Congress.) 

 [Cir. 167] 



