The federal government in Part I. in the Report on the Lumber Industry takes up the problem in very great detail. While recognizing the difficulty of making a definite statement regarding the extent to which the timber land has increased in value, the writers of the report are nevertheless struck by the extent of the increase.[1]
The value of timber varies so extremely, according to location, species, quality and stand, that it is impossible to measure accurately the average amount of the advance. For the purpose of this report it is not necessary so to measure it. The comparative figures hereafter given are not intended to represent the average values of any kind of timber or to establish in any sense a timber price.
That the increase has been nothing less than enormous is recognized by the men most familiar with the business. In speaking of the rise of prices in the last twenty years they refer to changes from 12i cents to $4.00 per thousand; from 10 cents to $3.00 a thousand; from $5.00 to $20.00 an acre; 300 per cent, in ten years; from $1.50 to $20.00 an acre; from 50 cents to $3.00 per thousand. These figures are for southern pine. In cypress: from 15 cents to $5.00 a thousand. In the Lake states men in the business similarly speak of increases from "no market value" (hemlock and hardwoods) to $4.00 to $10.00 a thousand; from $2.00 to $6.00 a thousand (hardwoods). In the Pacific-Northwest similar general statements are made of rises in value, such as 15 cents to $2.50 a thousand; 10 cents to $2.50 a thousand; "no market value" to $2.50 a thousand; 75 cents to $2.50 a thousand.
While these statements give no accurate measure of the general rise of stumpage values, they do show that, according to this report of lumbermen, such rise during the last twenty or thirty years has been enormous.[2]There are obvious difficulties in the way of setting any definite limitation on the increase in the value of timber lands.
The rise in stumpage values is likely to be greatest when a new region or a new species is just beginning to attract attention. When timber is selling by the acre at rates equivalent to ten cents a thousand, it may rise almost at once to fifty cents a thousand. The increase on each thousand feet in such a case is unimportant; yet it is an advance of four hundred per cent.[3]
Eoughly, during the decade ending with 1907 or 1908 (the period immediately before the industrial depression) the federal investigation indicates that "the value of a given piece of southern pine taken at random is likely to have increased in any ratio from threefold to tenfold."[4] The investigators found instances of even greater increases. For example, tracts which sold by the acre at ten or fifteen cents a thousand feet had advanced twenty, or even thirty fold, in ten years; but in general these figures seem to hold fairly true. In the Lake region "the general ratio of advance of timber values during the last ten or twenty years has probably been less than in the south. Perhaps
