18 STATUS OF FOEESTKY IN THE UNITED STATES. 



arrangement would be yet more advantageous than it now is for both 

 State and National forests. 



(7) Provision for the taxation of forest owners on an acreage basis, 

 the fund so raised to be devoted to forest patrol. This plan is suc- 

 cessfully followed in Nova Scotia, and a law containing similar pro- 

 visions was introduced last winter in the legislature of Wisconsin. 



THE PROMOTION OF FORESTRY. 



State laws to encourage forestry have thus far been chiefly of two 

 kinds: Those creating forest commissions and, of late, State foresters, 

 and those offering inducements, in the form of bounties or exemption 

 from taxes, to plant forest trees or to maintain forests. The latter 

 have had some slight educational value, but they have in most cases 

 been poorly framed and they have usually been declared unconstitu- 

 tional. They have led neither to the planting nor to the preservation 

 of forests. The State forest commissions and State foresters, on the 

 other hand, have very greatly advanced the cause of forestry by 

 gathering and distributing information, advising the Government or 

 legislature of the State, and cooperating with private forest owners 

 in the care of forest tracts and woodlots and in the establishment 

 and care of forest plantations. 



Cooperation with private owners in forest management and forest 

 planting is of paramount importance. The private owners must be 

 met on their own ground. Until the resources of real cooperation 

 are exhausted it is not time to consider measures for bringing forestry 

 to pass by drastic legislation. 



Forest taxation is one of the insistent problems involved in the 

 encouragement of forestry by the State. At present private forests 

 are in many cases practically taxed out of existence. Our forests 

 are doubly discriminated against in the tax laws : First, because they 

 belong to the class of real property, which is already overburdened, 

 and, second, because they are assessed on the basis of sale value 

 instead of on the basis of income. Such a state of affairs encourages 

 reckless cutting, after which the devastated forest is too commonly 

 allowed to revert to the State. 



Public sentiment has been awakened to the need of a substitute 

 for the general property tax as applied to forest lands. Economists 

 have for years recognized the fact that the burden to which such lands 

 are subject under present tax systems is very unjust, and desultory 

 attempts have been made to effect a remedy. As was said, these 

 attempts, w^hich have usually taken the form of partial or entire 

 exemption of forests from taxation, of rebates of taxes, or of bounties 

 to the owners, have not been very successful. 



In the autumn of 1907 the whole subject was brought into the 

 field of general public thought by the International Tax Association 



[Cir. 167] 



