Go up into the mountains, up to the city of Berlin, and look about you there. You will see the mountain sides are bare of growth. They have been cut over; they have been burned over; the soil has been washed entirely off the rocks, so that in a thousand years trees will not grow there again. That was all done when standing timber in New Hampshire was practically tax free. Most of the destructive lumbering was done before the timber lands were taxed to any considerable extent, for it has only been since the Tax Commission assumed authority in this particular, six years ago, that any attempt has been made to assess such property at anything like its true value.

There are in this State nineteen unincorporated places. The gentleman from Stratford, Mr. Hutchins, has referred to them. In these places there is no local tax. The only assessment is that of the State and County tax, so that the timber standing there is assessed very lightly indeed. In the last year before the Tax Commission began its work, the tax in the unincorporated places amounted to only three and seventy-nine onehundredths mills on the dollar, whereas in the surrounding towns as a whole it amounted to twenty-three mills on the dollar. According to the experts, only one thing could happen; the surrounding towns where the tax was relatively high would be stripped of lumber, and in the unincorporated places where the tax was relatively low, the timber would be left to grow. What was the result? The cutting in the unincorporated places was quite as hard and close as in the neighboring towns. It certainly was not the tax there that caused the lumber to be removed. Indeed in the unincorporated places, until a year ago, the tax was never so much as four cents an acre, because there was no local assessment whatever. I think this argument is difficult to answer

Mr. Ayres of Franconia. I wish you would let me answer it. Mr. Brown of Manchester. — I do not yield to Mr. Ayres at the present time; at a later time he may answer if he can.

Take the pine regions of the State. Have the taxes operated to any great extent to reduce the growth? That growth has been, in my judgment, reduced considerably, though the acreage has been largely increased. Whether in the future the volume will be further decreased is a question. If you have any doubt as to the amount of pine that is growing in southern New Hampshire, when you go home by automobile, as many of you will, look the country over from every hilltop and in every direction, and see what there is. There is still a wonderful supply.

Has not the portable sawmill done incalculable damage in the

pine regions? I ask you, gentlemen, about that. The portable saw mill is erected in the middle of the lot and in that way the necessity of drawing the logs any distance is obviated. The result is that the small growth can be drawn to the mill at slight cost and sawed out at a profit. Every tree that will make a "two by two" piece of sawed lumber is cut. The mill men take a stick no more than four inches through and saw it up because there is a little profit in it, the tree being near the mill. If the growth had to be drawn away to a mill somewhere else it would not be cut so closely. It may be that in some cases the taxes assessed upon timber have caused the owners to sell it. I do not doubt this has been true in some cases, but it has not in many. The portable mill has reduced the pine.

It appears that Professor Foster made an examination of certain timber lands in this State in 1907. In 1913 he went over the same ground again or a part of it to see, if he could, the effect of taxation upon the growth, whether it had caused its removal or not. Now the Tax Commission did not begin work upon valuations, and taxes were not increased at all until the spring of 1912. Of course it was impossible to do much the first year. Therefore Professor Foster's observation, as he stated it, was, of a period principally under the old system when timber was not taxed much anyway, and was never taxed at full value.

What has caused timber to be removed? Latterly the price has been the great inducement. Fifteen years ago soft wood stumpage in this State was worth about four dollars per thousand feet. Today it is worth in the neighborhood of fifteen. And do you not think, gentlemen, that property that has enjoyed such a rise in value in the last fifteen years, an increase of between three hundred and four hundred per cent, can afford for a few years more to pay taxes upon a full valuation? It would seem so to me, and I think that this fall when this amendment is submitted, if it passes here, the people of New Hampshire will feel the same way.

What are you going to do to replace the $1,200,000 that classification on the basis desired by its advocates will take out of the revenues of this State? Where are you going to get that sum? I can tell you how classification will affect the farmer. All farms, speaking by and large, have woodlots. To classify these lots for taxation at a lower rate than the rest of the farm property will not affect the appropriations the voters make in the town meetings a bit. There will be just as much money to raise as before; there will be more money to raise, because as everybody knows we are entering a period of very heavy

public expenditures, such expenditures as we never dreamed of before. Upon what are the increased taxes to be levied if you leave the woodlots out in whole or in part? If you leave the woodlots out the farmer has got to pay just as much tax but it will be levied on the rest of his property, that is all. The man who owns woodland principally will be a big gainer by the arrangement, but the man who owns other property principally will be a big loser.

I think it is absolutely true of New Hampshire that up to this time greater profits have been made in lumber than in any other branch of business. Every town has men who have become rich in this trade. And I think we ought to go slow about exempting trees especially while present prices and present profits hold. Now you can figure in various ways about this matter of profit or loss in the growing of timber. You can talk about two per cent, as the gentleman from Franconia has today, and all that, but the more correct method in my judgment, is to take the money that a lot sells for or will sell for when the timber is fit to cut, and compute the worth of it at the time the trees began to grow. If you say the land is worth $500 an acre to begin with, then of course, you will find that the raising of timber is unprofitable. But if you take the money. derived from the yield and figure backward, taking out taxes, taking out everything that should come out, including interest at 5% compounded annually as well as the actual value of the land, you will find that as a rule the growing of trees affords no slight profit. In this regard it should be remembered that the land timber grows on is not by any means the best in the State. This proposition is figured out in the article I spoke about, and which you will also find in the Bulletin of the National Tax Association for January last, and the conclusion is reached that with the financial maturity of pine fixed at forty years and that of spruce at sixty years, or that of both averaged at fifty years, the growing of soft wood timber is distinctly profitable, even if full taxes are paid; and the proposition would hold good if the maturity were placed at sixty or seventy or even eighty years, although in these cases the profit would be less.

The theorists tell us pine and spruce timber ought to stand until it is seventy or eighty years old. With present prices, it is not going to stand so long. The economic maturity of pine is generally considered to be reached in about forty years, and that of spruce twenty years later than that. We are not going to wait for a slow old growth that will reach its ultimate maturity in eighty to one hundred years, but are going to

be content with the more rapid one that ends in half that time and then makes way for a new crop.

I said to begin with that I was not opposed to a proper classification, but I am opposed to the radical reduction in forest taxes which is in substance advocated here. With such a classification as may now be had in Massachusetts and perhaps with one not quite so stringent 1 should be satisfied. There they have a law which permits woodlands to be classified but the owner must make application, have his land examined and if found suitable registered. Then it is permitted to be classified and taxed at a lower rate than other property, the most of the taxes to be paid when the timber is cut. There is, however, an annual land tax and a commutation tax. There are also various provisions relating to proper management of the property. What is the result? That law has been standing on the statute books for over four years, and not more than a new hundred acres in the whole Commonwealth have come in under it, and by high authority it has been declared a flat failure.

We are not going, I am sure, to permit timber owners to pay at a less rate than the owners of other property and not going to permit timber lands to be taxed at a less rate than other lands, unless there is to be some return therefor. We shall want a limit upon the size of the trees that may be cut, and we shall want a requirement in regard to reforesting and other scientific management somewhat as they have in Massachusetts. If there is going to be a concession, let it be a concession with compensation.

I am free to say that if I could have my way, I would at the proper time provide for the classification of timber lands in this State, but I would also require that trees below a certain diameter - which it is not necessary for me to fix now - should be left to stand and grow and that when trees were cut at all it should be with some sort of intelligence and when an area was stripped it should be reforested. Great harm has come from the cutting of seed trees. The portable sawmill men in the pine regions and other operators in the spruce country have stripped the land bare, until we have in this State seven hundred thousand acres of naked land that once bore magnificent forests. Nothing of value is growing there now because the men who cut the timber off also cut the seed trees and the little trees and left nothing or practically nothing behind them.

I should say wait a little before classification. Let us see what the prices for lumber are going to be. We know, every one of us, how stumpage has increased in value in the last few years. The war is stripping the forests of this country and Canada, of Ger

many, France and Great Britain, in short of the world, and we are going to see much higher prices for lumber than we have yet seen. A little later it may be wise to classify timber lands in the way I have suggested. But it seems to me this is not the time for a change, certainly not for an unqualified reduction of forest taxes at the expense of other taxes which this amendment is intended to permit and as far as possible to effect.

I do not think it is very patriotic in the gentleman from Franconia to suggest to the members of this committee that the selectmen of the towns of the State, in violation of the law and of their oaths and in disregard of the instructions of the Tax Commission, should do the thing he desires, that is, assess woodland property for less than its full and true vaue. I understood that to be what he meant when he said it would be perfectly right for local men to go ahead and use their gray matter, and it was not a worthy appeal. So far as the Tax Commission is concerned, I have no defense to make. The members have gone along in their own way, enforcing the law, and they will proceed in that way until the end-1 mean until their end or that of the Commission.

Mr. Brennan of Peterborough. - I would like to ask, Mr. Chairman, a question. He speaks of the Tax Commission. Do I understand you are unanimous or are you a minority of the Tax Commission?

Mr. Brown of Mancehster. We are absolutely unanimous in regard to enforcing the law; there is not a particle of difference among us in that respect.

Mr. Brennan of Peterborough. - Do you think the selectmen do make the valuation of timber lands on its true value?

Mr. Brown of Manchester. — I think they do as well as they can along that line. I think the selectmen do that very thing. There are exceptions that occasionally come to our notice.

Mr. Brennan of Peterborough.

May I ask you this question: if it is not very frequently the case that they adopt, contrary to the provisions of the Constitution, a valuation not in proportion to the other valuations in town? Do not you find that very frequently the case?

Mr. Brown of Manchester.—I do not think that is frequently the case. It is doubtless sometimes the case, but I do not think it often happens.

Mr. Doyle of Nashua. Are you gentlemen of the Tax Commission content to have full power, plenty of law to insist upon a fair and full valuation on this very subject matter we are talking about, as it stands today, without this amendment or proposed amendment?