The Sauk Centre herald. (Sauk Centre, Stearns County, Minn.) 1886-current, 1908-01-23
TO GROW FORESTS
Plan For Covering Dennded sPOr-
lions OF Minnesota
L i. ACT
Forestry Commissioner c. c. And
rews Discusses This important
Matter at Length

The pine forests of Minnesota have
been logged sixty years and most of
the timber has been shipped out Of
the State. III a few more years the
original pine will be gone. Already
thirty thousand car loads OF forest
products are brought into Minnesota
annually from the Pacific coast
The population of the United States
since it's first settlement has increaS-
ed at the average rate of eighteen per
cent every ten years, and in eighty
years will reach the amazing number
OF 80. 900, 900! Forest products will be
IL much greater demand then than
now. If we neglect suitable measures
of reforestat ton our posterity will be
ashamed of us.
Forestry is not an expenditure. 1t
is a savings bank investment. The
great thing in forestry is that it uti-
Lies third and fourth rate sandy,
billy and rocky-land that is unfit
for agriculture. The yield tables OF
Germany show that an acre of such
land planted as part of forest, with
pine, on forestry principles-seedling
trees two or three years old planted
at an average distance apart of four
or five feet, it being necessary to have
forest crowded when young to pro-
mote height growth-will in eighty
years produce $4,000 feet board mea-
sure. The surviving trees-for the
greater number would have died out
would be- from twelve to fifteen inches
in diameter breast high. They would
continue, if left standing, to grow
many years after they had reached
the age of eighty years, but not at
rate to earn good interest
If the state this year planted 81,
500 acres of forestry land in the same
way and continued to do as much
every year for eighty years it would
then have a normal forest of 5000,
900 acres-not in one body but in scat
tered localities-of the value of prob
ably $500, 900, 900 yielding net revenue
of three per cent per annum. From
the 1880 acres planted this year there
could then be cut 675,000,O00 feet
board measure of logs and the same
amount every year thereafter perpet-
ually. Under forestry management
larger percentage of the cut-over area
would become reforested by natural
seeding than is the case under present
methods of logging, (now only about
five per cent of cut-over land becomes
we'll stocked with pine from natural
seeding); the blank spaces would be
promptly replanted and sustained
yield secured
In planting about two hundred acres
substantially in the way above men
toned the State has found that two
men can plant one acre day, the
whole cost, exclusive of land. being
about $500 per acre. To plant 1880
acres each spring would require $500
employees thirty days. Although some
thousands of men will for few years
be coming out of the logging camps
every spring, some of whom could be
employed in planting, and although
the planting would be done in half a
dozen or more counties, still it is not
likely the State could for number of
years plant 1880 acres annually. The
State should not undertake to do any
more than it can do economically and
well. 1t should, however, engage in
the work with energy.
Prussia plants and sows $4,000 acres
of state forest annually.
l believe the State will be able to
purchase forestry land at an average
price of not exceeding $3.50 per acre,
bnt as the State has some school land
that is only fit for forestry, but which
according to the constitution must be
offered for sale at not less than S. 100
per acre, authority should be granted
for paying $500 per acre when neces-
sary
The ordinary revenue is not suffic-
lent to permit the legislature to ap-
money enough to carry into