discover any power that is capable of being exercised by any man or body of men that can, for years to come, stop 'the extravagant appropriation and expenditure of public money in this state. To estimate the average tax rate covering a future period of forty years at two per cent is probably estimating it considerably below what actual experience will determine it to be.

With reference to the item "c," fire, disease, care, etc. The person who has never had the opportunity to view the destruction of forest areas by the various destructive agencies which the timber owner is compelled to contend with is wholly unqualified to fairly estimate the liability to damage from these sources. Fires, sometimes started by lightning, but more often through the carelessness or the viciousness of some poor, indolent or drunken specimen of humanity, often destroys in a day the growth of a century on large areas of valuable forests that the owners have sweat blood earning and saving the necessary money to pay taxes and interest upon, while indulging the hope that at some future time the crop could be marketed at a profitable figure.

A forest fire in a dry season is very apt to develop into the type known as a "ground fire," which is the most dangerous and destructive type of forest fire known. It not only kills the growth by cooking and burning the roots of the trees, but it destroys the centuries of accumulation of humus, burning everything down to the mineral soil, rendering the land so burned unproductive of any forest or vegetable growth of any value for at least one hundred years. It is the fire of this character that burns the timber and the soil on our steep mountain sides, destroying the intricate network of rootlets, which hold together the particles of disintegrated rock and the humus or decayed vegetable matter, making the soil which makes possible the splendid growth of softwood timber we often find on the steep slopes of our northern New Hampshire mountains.

Next in importance as a destructive agency of timber is

probably the diseases that attack the different species of trees in this country. It would be impossible for me to name them all or to intelligently discuss the damage done by them. In this connection I will simply call your attention to two types of timber disease now raging in New Hampshire, to which my attention has been called very recently from a notice sent out by the American Forestry Association from Washington under date of December 7, 1916. I quote:

"WARNING: WHITE PINE TREES BEING DESTROYED. A disease known as the WHITE PINE BLISTER RUST threatens the destruction of all the white pine and other fiveleafed pine trees in the United States. It has already appeared in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Minnesota and in Quebec and Ontario. There is no known cure for it. It kills the white pines infected and it spreads steadily. The spores or seeds are blown from diseased pines to currant and gooseberry bushes. They germinate on the leaves of these bushes. The leaves then produce millions of spores or seeds of the disease, which are blown by the wind from the bushes to the pines, and these, even those several miles distant from the nearest bushes, are infected, become diseased and die. The White Pines in New England are worth $75,000,000. Unless the ravages of the White Pine Blister Rust are stopped, these pines will be destroyed. THE AMERICAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION URGES

PEOPLE IN ALL THE REGIONS WHERE THE DISEASE HAS BEEN DISCOVERED TO DESTROY AT ONCE ALL CURRANT AND GOOSEBERRY BUSHES, DISEASED PINES AND OTHERS EXPOSED TO INFECTION. THIS WILL HELP TO STOP THE SPREAD OF THE DISEASE."

From a New Hampshire daily paper I recently clipped

"NEW HAMPSHIRE IS AFFECTED BY DISEASE.

"Washington, December 13.-An outbreak of the European poplar-canker, a dangerous fungus disease that threatens the poplars of the United States, was reported today by the Department of Agriculture. States affected include New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Ohio and Nebraska."

Then we must make allowance for the often serious damage done by wind, for the ravages of the gypsy and the brown-tail moths and other destructive elements handicapping the man who has the patience and the courage to apply his energies and his earnings for a lifetime to the growing of forest trees.

Upon a full, fair survey of the situation can it reasonably be said that two per cent is a high estimate of the annual cost of carrying all these risks, or that an allowance of ten per cent is not a conservative estimate of the total annual cost.

The total annual increment is the timber growth. No other crop can be raised on the land. The annual growth of spruce and balsam varies from two per cent to four per cent in the large areas of mixed growth and from three per cent to five per cent on areas which have been cleared once and cultivated or pastured. The pine growing in the old field or pasture on the abandoned farm shows an annual increase in volume of from five per cent to seven per cent.

I have yet to find a man who can figure a profit on any investment that costs annually nine per cent to ten per cent and yields an annual return of two per cent to seven per cent.

Do you wonder that these lands are being offered to the federal government at low prices and that some three or four hundred thousand acres in the White Mountain regions have already passed into its hands and no longer can be taxed for any purpose?

Sentiment is protecting some small areas in central and southern New Hampshire. They are owned by a few people, who have watched faithfully for a quarter or a half a century the growth of pine and chestnut on the ancestral home-lots in which the present owner probably roamed and played in childhood's happy hours, breathing the "breath of the woods," so permeated with the odors of pine and balsam that disease could find no lodging place with them; or possibly the lots which the grandparents begged of them to preserve and keep intact so long as they lived.

I saw one of these lots in a town in Hillsboro County, which was owned by a grand old man, who said to me, "You can tax it and multiply the taxes on it, and then tax it some more, but I will never allow it to be cut so long as I live and can pay." Unfortunately, only a few such men can be found in New Hampshire. More frequently we find the owners of the pine lot which formed a part of the old homestead in sorrow because of the fact that the taxes are so burdensome that it is impossible for them to save from the proceeds of their toil on the small cultivated area, after their families have been fed and scantily clothed, enough money to pay the taxes assessed annually on the more valuable portion of the farm or back lot area, which is covered with timber.

I have in mind a notable instance of such a case in this state, where two old people-a brother and sister—live half-clothed and poorly fed, in old rickety buildings on a farm that produces but little income. The back lot, which was formerly the wood lot, has a stand of pine, which is a growth of about sixty years. It is accessible to both rail and water and is valuable. The farm and lot area are assessed on a valuation of $10,000, which is not excessive. It is absolutely impossible for these old people to save from the proceeds of the farm enough money to pay their taxes. They must sell the timber or lose the whole property, which is soon to be advertised for sale by the tax collector of the

There are many such instances where the owner of the pine lot connected with the farm finds it impossible to save from the net proceeds of the farm sufficient money to pay the taxes on the timber. These lots are fast going into the hands of operators, who are making a clean cut of all the standing timber on them.

The valuation for taxation of this class of property has been increased since 1911 from forty per cent to more than four hundred per cent in some instances, and the tax levy is practically the same proportion; and yet if the present valuation on lots having upon them a marketable stand varies at all from "true and full value," the average is on the side of undervaluation.

Assessing officers have in some cases "let the bars down" just a little in an effort to save from destruction as a source of revenue for the future a stand of timber, the growth and production of which involves the entire increment of the soil on which it stands for a period equal to the lifetime of an ordinary human being. Any favoritism of this kind which involves the slightest deviation from the hard and fast rule of "full and true value" is a direct violation of the tax laws of the state, a violation which will not be assented to or go unnoticed by myself or by my associates so long as the present law is in force and we, the tax commissioners, are charged with the duty of enforcing it.

If you do not like the law, change it; if you do like it, but are not willing to have it enforced, it will be necessary for you to put the responsibility of its enforcement into the hands of some persons other than your present tax commission.

Leaving the pine lots, I want to consider, briefly, the situation with reference to the large timbered areas in the northern part of the state.

There is remaining in New Hampshire less than 90,000 acres of virgin timber. This is being rapidly cut. On a large portion of the area cut in recent years a clean cut has been made, everything suitable for pulpwood being taken.