THE DEVASTATION, CONSERVATION AND RESTORATION OF NEW HAMPSHIRE FORESTS.

Address of Albert O. Brown, President of the New England State Tax Officials' Association, at the Annual Conference at Dixville, October 6, 1917.

Among the portraits of distinguished men in the state house at Concord is one of a major general of the period. of the civil war. It is a full length likeness, and at the foot runs this legend, "If anyone attempts to haul down the American flag, shoot him on the spot." This message of a cabinet officer to a lieutenant on a revenue cutter is one of the famous military orders of the world. In its present application it expresses the desire and the purpose of a great and free people.

The author was a remarkable man. In private life he was a legal practitioner and a writer of recognized merit. His public services were many and varied. He successively occupied the positions of cadet, ensign, lieutenant, captain, staff officer, secretary of a great state and its superintendent of schools, member of its assembly, adjutant general, assistant treasurer of the United States, postmaster of the city of New York, secretary of the treasury in the cabinet of President Buchanan, United States senator, major general of militia, major general of volunteers, commander of the department of Maryland, commander of the department of the east, minister to France and governor of New York.

Such was John A. Dix. He was born among the foothills of these mountains a little more than one hundred miles south of the place where we are now assembled. This township of Dixville was once his property. In 1805 it

was granted by the state to his father, Timothy Dix, Jr., from whom he derived title.

Dixville was carved out of the great spruce forest that originally prevailed in this region. So far as New Hampshire is concerned, that forest was bounded on the north by Canada, itself a vast wilderness. Toward the south it extended to the pine growth that flourished on the lower levels beyond the mountains. There the spruce ran down the ridges into the pine, and the pine came up the hollows into the spruce and the two were dovetailed together.

In the lower counties at the time of the grant, the settler's ax and the settler's fire had made their impression upon the virgin growth. The ship timber and other lumber that from the first settlement of the state had gone down the mast roads in winter and the rivers later in the season had taken a portion of the best trees, but the supply still seemed as inexhaustible as it was thought undesirable.

The upper half of the state, measured longitudinally, was for the most part the same continuous wilderness to which Mr. Webster so eloquently referred. He said, "It did not happen to me to be born in a log cabin; but my elder brothers and sisters were born in a log cabin, raised amid the snowdrifts of New Hampshire at a period so early that, when the smoke first rose from its rude chimney and curled over the frozen hills, there was no similar evidence of a white man's habitation between it and the settlements on the rivers of Canada."

Those grand soft wood forests have disappeared. Of the pines that stood as straight as arrows, measured one hundred feet to the first limb and raised their tops nearly three times that distance into the sky, not one is left. Practically all the old growth has been cut. The finest of the few remaining trees form a small group in Sutton. Fortunately this has been purchased by the Society for Protection of New Hampshire Forests, for the benefit of

Year by year the original spruce growth has receded to the north, until a few thousand acres in a remote and difficult section in the apex of the state are all that are left, and there the ax is busy. There is, to be sure, here and there in the mountains a handful of untouched spruce, but the amount is negligible.

If the cause of this wholesale reduction of growth were sought by the process of elimination one of the quantities to be removed from the equation would be the general property tax. The flats were cut over, the valleys logged and the mountain sides stripped, burned and washed bare in a period when woodland taxes were next to nothing, and in some cases nothing at all. The administration of the tax laws was as a rule entrusted to selectmen who were obliging, and forest proprietors were importunate. This condition resulted in valuations that had no relation to values; and some land, by mistake or otherwise, was omitted from the lists altogether.

There are in the county of Coös nineteen unincorporated places, containing 293,811 acres of taxable land, reduced during the last six years from 342,060 by purchases under the Weeks act. This is mostly forest land, though upon it there are some improvements, of which The Balsams is an example. This land is subject to state and county taxes only, while land of a similar character in the incorporated towns is, of course, subject not only to like taxes but also to a local assessment, which is much heavier. The valuations in both groups have, loosely speaking, been made upon the same basis. In 1911, a typical year of the regime under which most of the old growth spruce was removed and the last before the tax commission assumed authority, the rate for the unincorporated places was 3.79 mills on the dollar. That for the adjoining towns varied from ten to twenty eight mills on the dollar, while that for the organized portions of the county as a whole averaged twenty three mills. As a rule, the forest areas in the un

organized places are less accessible than those in the surrounding towns. Yet it is not overstating the fact to say that the cutting has been as extensive and thorough in the former places as in the latter, whereas, according to tax theorists everywhere, it should have been emphatically otherwise.

The significance of the argument is increased if it is added that in said year the taxes in the unorganized places, including all the improvements, were only 2.91 cents per acre. They have never been so much as four cents per acre until advanced in the last two years on account of additional improvements.

It appears from a table in the New Hampshire Forestry Report for 1903 that during the year covered by it the pulp mills in the northern counties obtained 27.6 per cent of the wood consumed from Canada and 11.6 per cent from Maine. As it is known that some also came from Vermont, it is plain that more than fifty per cent was grown outside the state.

As the consumption of pulp wood has increased enormously and as the domestic supply has not so increased, it is fair to conclude that the quantity and proportion of imported wood are much greater than at the time of the report. This position is supported by the opinion of those who are enabled to observe the commodity in transit. It is further sustained by the fact that in recent years the pulp mills and the interests connected therewith have acquired and are operating immense spruce areas in Quebec. Now, if the taxes upon their domestic stumpage were so great that its retention would result in loss, would not these owners convert it into pulp immediately and conserve their holdings across the border, where almost no tax is assessed?

It may be said that conditions may sometime arise to prevent the importation of pulp wood from Canada. This answer has some force; but has it enough to explain the

thousands of acres of forest land and the steady acquisition of more? It may be alleged that the holding has been in the expectation of relief from taxes. This is not probable. The classification of a very large proportion of the land. area of the state for taxation at a lower rate than the remainder has not in late years been regarded with favor. Few owners, if any, have considered it so imminent as to justify the retention of wild land on the ground that it might be benefited by a reduction in taxes or the sale of improved land on the ground that it might be prejudiced by an advance.

There are no unorganized places in the pine regions of the state. All the forests have been subjected to local as well as state and county taxation. There has perhaps been less concession in the matter of valuation than in the north. This is because there are few large holdings in the pine sections, whereas in the spruce country the ownership is mainly concentrated in a few great corporations and is constantly becoming more so. In this state, as elsewhere, the rich and powerful have heretofore had more influence with assessing officers than the poor and weak. But even in the south, as a result of the failure to detect the rapidly increasing values of the pine lots and of the desire to favor those lots, valuations prior to the last five years were, both absolutely and relatively, ridiculously low and taxes proportionately light. Under these conditions, according to the widely accepted belief, the pine growth should have been saved, but it was slaughtered. Practically all the land was cut over once, and much of it two or three times, during the many years of illegal classification when forest taxes were at a minimum. And the last of the cutting was exceedingly close.

Valuations were everywhere advanced in 1912 to meet the statutory requirement of full and true value. In a few localities a second advance was necessary, but for the most part the result sought was achieved in one year.