lands, they must leave the saplings; but there at least an effort is made to prevent the fires.

Another step towards conservative lumbering, which is likely to be taken when the fires diminish in frequency, is that of preserving the young growth from injury in felling. At present nothing is further from the minds of logging crews. Where a tree standing in the midst of a number of young ones is cut a certain amount of injury to the latter is rarely avoidable. But it is not necessary, as is done now, to let the oxen and horses trample down the seedlings, to roll logs upon them, to let skids and sleds run over them, and where a sapling is an inch in the way to chop it down. All this is the every-day practice of American lumber crews everywhere. In the few places in the United States where silviculture has been attempted, as in Biltmore forest, one of the first things the forester has had to teach his men has been to take heed of the

young trees. But as soon as lumbermen generally discover that the fire is likely to keep out of their slashings, this lesson will be speedily learned.

All this, and much more in the future of American forests, depends upon the restriction of fires. We have seen in this chapter that a proper fire police cannot, as a rule, be kept up by the owners of timber-lands themselves, owing to the scattered manner in which their holdings are ordinarily situated. We have learned that government must intervene by proper legislation to protect the forests, just as governmental agencies protect city

property against fire. We have discussed some of the means by which the various States have attempted to perform this duty, and the manner in which such laws are working; and finally we have come to the conclusion that after all the best hope for us lies in education and the creating of a public opinion that will emphatically condemn the reckless incendiary. But we have intimated above that there is another factor depending on legislation which must be adjusted before forestry based on silviculture can pay in the United States. This matter of taxation will be the subject of the next chapter.

THE

CHAPTER X

FORESTRY AND TAXATION

'HE problem of raising taxes in such manner as to make every citizen bear his just share of the public expense and at the same time be as little as possible a burden on the industries of the people is admittedly one of the most difficult ones confronting modern statesmanship. It might be said that taxes are always paid grudgingly, little credit though this fact may reflect upon our people. The chronic grumbler, the tax-fighter and perjured tax-dodger, is a well-known nuisance in every community, and usually belongs to that section of the people arrogating to itself the name of "the better class." With all this dissatisfaction created by tax laws in every State, it is remarkable that comparatively little study has been devoted in this country to this subject, and that most of our taxes, especially those for local expenditures, are still levied by a system which is almost barbarous in its crudeness, inefficiency, and injustice.

As everybody knows, most of the taxes raised in the United States for municipal and local expenditure of all kinds, and to a considerable extent for the cost of the state governments, is laid upon

property, real and personal, at a more or less arbitrary valuation. The defects of this system are pretty well understood. No regard is paid to the question whether the property does or does not produce a revenue, so as to often make it impossible to hold property which for one reason or the other does not furnish an annual income. In other cases, again, the whole revenue is eaten up by the taxes, making it as undesirable to hold such property as it is to own such as produces no income whatever. The fact that practically the greater portion of personal property is exempt from taxation altogether, because the assessors cannot discover it, makes the injustice of the burden on the real property still more glaring.

No species of property is hit more hardly by the crudities of the tax laws than timber-lands. This circumstance is brought about by a number of conditions, and it exists as well in regard to lands stocked with merchantable timber as to lands covered with young growth. The question of making the forest industries of all kinds bear their just share of public expenditures is, of course, intimately bound up with the whole problem of taxation, and cannot be fully discussed in this book. So much only we will try to present here as is necessary to show how a faulty method of taxation is one of the chief obstacles to the introduction of better systems of forest exploitation, and especially to the restocking of denuded timber areas by silvicultural

treatment.

It must be clear from the outset that the necessity of paying annually a certain percentage of the value of a piece of forest land during the long period when the young trees slowly grow towards maturity must be a heavy burden upon the owners. Still, if this annual payment were kept within reasonable limits, it might be borne. It would be simply one of the items of expenditure which are required during this interval, just like those for interest, labor, supervision, and other things. If there is a fair expectation that the final harvest will net an amount of money sufficient to reimburse the proprietor for all these expenses with compound interest, the owner of timber-lands has no particular grievance. But, unfortunately, the amount so payable every year is usually far too high to permit a hope that it could ever be made up by the final return, even if the danger from fire did not make the raising of a new forest to maturity precarious. The reason why the annual payment is so high must be sought on the one hand in faulty assessment, on the other in extravagant expenditures.

The author ought to state in this place that in the discussion of the taxing problem he has in view primarily the laws and practice prevailing in the State of Wisconsin, with which he is most familiar. But the differences existing in the various other States are small and do not radically affect the understanding of the question how taxes affect the conduct of forestry in the United States.