Single tracts of 160 acres often have a value for the timber alone of $20,000 ...  Lands acquired ... under the guise of the homestead law are to-day in the hands of lumber companies who promptly purchased them from the settlers as soon as the title passed, and are either reserving them for later cutting or are holding the land itself after cutting for from $40 to $60 an acre, or even more—­a speculative process which effectively prevents the possibility of men of small means acquiring and establishing homes there. [Footnote 2:  “The National Forests and the Farmer,” in year book, Department of Agriculture, 1914, p. 70.]

To prevent this sort of thing, the government now sells the timber and the land separately, withholding from agricultural entry heavily timbered land until the timber is cut off.

In the Kaniksy National Forest, in Idaho and Washington, timber sales have been made to include much of the remaining agricultural timberland.  Within eight years fully 10,000 acres of land will be made available for settlement.  Permanent homes will be established and there will be available for the use of the communities approximately $225,000 for roads and schools, their share of the proceeds from the sale of the timber. [Footnote 3:  Ibid., p. 71.]

STATE FORESTS

Besides the National Forests, there are more than 4,000,000 acres of state forests.

Twenty-four states have forestry departments, sometimes under a state board or a commission, sometimes under the control of a single state forester, as in Massachusetts and Virginia.  In New York, New Jersey, and Wisconsin the state forestry is a part of the work of a general “conservation commission.”  In Connecticut it is centered in the state agricultural experiment station, and in Texas in the agricultural college.  In South Dakota the state forester is under the “commissioner of schools and public lands.”  So there is great variety in the organization of forestry work, and great variation in the amount and kind of attention given to it.

PRIVATELY OWNED TIMBERLANDS

The difference between the number of states having state forests and the number having forestry departments is due to the fact that the public forests embrace only a small part of the timbered land of a state.  It will be noted from the table on page 225 that only one southern state (North Carolina; two if Maryland is counted) has state forests.  Six of them (eight with Maryland and Virginia) have state forestry departments.  More attention is now being given to forest preservation and use in the South than these facts indicate, because of cooperation between state and national governments, chiefly through the county agents.  Such cooperation also exists in the northern states.  The map on page 242 shows cooperation for fire protection in New Hampshire.