The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1908-01-24
Original Pine Will Soon Be Gone;
Is Purchased Abroad.
Pacific Coast Country Shipping
Yearly $4,000 Cars.
Minnesota's Natural Advantage
Admits RefOrestati0n.
From Fridays Daily.

Forestry Commissioner c. C.. And
rews has Il plan for the reforestation
of Minnesota also suggests a proposed
amendemcnt to the constitution. The
letter of Commissioner Andrews fol-
lows:
been logged sixty years and most of
the timber has been shipped out of
the state. In 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 its first settlement has increased
ut the average rate of eighteen per
cent every ten years, and in eighty
will reach the amazing number of
320,000,000! Forest products will be in
much greater demand then than now
If we neglect suitable measures of re-
forestation our posterity will be
ashamed of us.
Forestry is not an expenditure. 1t
is savings bank investment. The
great thing in forestry is that it util-
ICES third and fourth rate-sandy,
billy, and rocky-land that is unfit for
agriculture. The yield tables of Ger
many show that an acre of such land
planted as part of forest, with pine,
on forestry principles seeding trees
two or three years old planted at an
average distance apart of four or five
feet, it being necessary to have for
est crowded when young to promote
height growth-wil in eighty years
produce $4,000 feet of board measure.
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 a rate
to earn good interest.
If the state this year planted 81,
800 acres of forestry land in the same
way and continued to do as much evry
year for eighty years it would then
have normal forest of 100000 acres
not in one body but in scattered
localities-of the value of probably
$200000000 yielding a net revenue of
three per cent per annum. From the
81 800 acres planted this year there
could then be cut 675,000,000 feet
board measure of logs and the same
amount every year thereafter perpetu-
ally. Under forestry management a
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 tower land becomes
well stocked with pine from natural
promptly replanted and a 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 a day, the
whole cost. exclusive of land being
about $500 per acre. To plant $500
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 that state could for a num-
Der of years plant 1880 acres an
nually. The state should not under
take to do any more than it can do
economically and well. 1t should how
Prussia plant and sows $4,000 acres
of state forest annually.
I believe the state will be able TO