54 
FORESTS OF WISCONSIN. 
acre a year. This sum is only 6 per cent, of the total forest 
expenses, which include all logging operations. 
We can not here consider whether all these efforts will pay 
as long as the land is held by private owners whose fortunes are 
only of today and whose heirs will prefer to parcel the land out 
to inexperienced settlers. The experience abroad and also in 
this country indicates that the state must undertake at least the 
most difficult and unprofitable parts of the work, and that the 
greatest good to the greatest number lies in state ownership of 
forests. New York waited a long time to see private owners 
manage rationally in its woods, but has found itself compelled 
at last to buy the land and to establish a forest organization to 
keep its mountains from being converted into desert brushlands 
and its streams from being alternately dry branches and mud 
torrents. A similar undertaking in Wisconsin would, at pres¬ 
ent, be greatly facilitated by the present conditions of owner¬ 
ship. The land is still held in large bodies and by men actively 
engaged in a business quite distinct from speculation and dealing 
in real estate, and ‘therefore a transfer could in most cases very 
easily be effected and at prices (25 to 50 cents per acre) which 
would seem to guarantee financial success to forestry even in the 
backwoods of Wisconsin. 
RESUME. 
Briefly stated, the present conditions are as follows: 
The State of Wisconsin, with a population of about 2 million,, 
a taxable property of about 600 million dollars, has a home con¬ 
sumption of over 600 million feet B. M. of lumber, besides 
enormous quantities of other w T ood material, which, if imported 
would cost the State over 25 million dollars. Of its northern 
half, a land surface of over 18 million acres, only 7 per cent, 
is cultivated, the rest forming one continuous body of forest and 
wasteland. From this area there have been cut during the last 
60 years more than 85 billion feet B. M. of pine lumber alone, 
and the annual cut during the past ten years exceeded 3 billion 
feet on the average per year. 
