DOES IT PAY TO PLANT TREES FOR TIMBER? This is another question. Fifty years ago it would generally have been answered in the negative. The pioneer was still clearing land for his farm, the great lumber companies were but beginning their work, and the Great Plains were not yet peopled. Conditions have changed. The virgin forests are about gone. The question is no longer: "How can we get rid of this superfluous timber?" It is now: "Where is the lumber supply of the immediate future to come from?" It is no longer a problem for children's children. It concerns us all to-day. The man who builds a fence, a house or a railroad reads the warning in the price list of the lumber dealer.
The forests of the country are not gone yet, nor nearly gone. In regions originally in woods Nature is the great planter. Land lying idle "goes back to forest" in a few years. Local wants are supplied from the woodlots of farmers. No general alarm over shortage in the lumber supply will break out in such communities.
The Bureau of Forestry has a "Co-operative Tree-planting Plan," simple as the Woodlot Plan, in fact a phase of it, by which owners of land who wish to put some acres into a wood crop can have expert advice as to selection of kinds, and care of the crop. An agent of the Bureau visits the neighbourhood, and meets in a conference all who may be interested in planting. Advice is based on examination of soil, drainage, exposure, climatic con ditions, and a study of the experience of planters in like regions and under like conditions.
Of the many plans now in force the majority are on the prairies, but many are in the "abandoned farm" regions of New England. The great treeless belt from the Dakotas to Texas has been the inevitable centre of activity in general tree planting. Forty acres planted to trees entitled a man to a quarter section of land under the Homestead Law. Failure marked much of this "tree-claim" work, some honestly, some dishonestly done. Cottonwoods, box elders, silver maples and
willows, quick-growing but short-lived trees, were generally planted because they could be depended upon to grow. Grad ually better trees were introduced, with higher timber and fuel value, as well as ability to stand against the winds and to give shade and protection to homes, orchards and crops. Altogether, tree planting has been vague and unsystematic but persistent in the treeless belt. It has been an evolution and an education to the people, and it is going to become a financial success.
The forests of the Mississippi Valley are giving out, but the demand for posts and railroad ties and telegraph poles increases as the country develops. Telephone and trolley lines are threading the country, doubling the demand for poles and cross ties. The Kansas farmer cannot afford to buy fence posts grown in Canada, Oregon or Maine. Neither can he do without. His shrewdest move is to raise his posts as he would any other crop, and sell the surplus to his less provident neighbours.
The growing of wood crops for profit is the logical outcome of Western experimentation. Railroad companies have begun to raise their own ties. Landowners have put some of their best land into tree crops. Among the latter are many farmers. The quickest crop is fuel; the next, posts; next, cross ties; and last, poles for telegraph, telephone and trolley lines.
The search has been for a tree that can stand hot, dry winds and occasional drought, and produce in the shortest possible time wood that is durable in contact with the soil. The tree that comes nearest to fulfilling all these requirements is the hardy catalpa, native of the Mississippi Valley, which reaches its best development in the Ohio Valley and in Arkansas. It needs a porous soil, for its root system is large, ranging widely for food and water, and anchoring the trees securely against wind. On tough clay soil these trees are a failure.