the advance of any given tracts taken at random, in ten years from 1898 was most likely to be between twofold and fivefold." In the Pacific northwest, where the development in lumbering has been comparatively recent, "a tract taken at random is likely to have increased in any ratio from threefold to tenfold in the ten years ending in 1907 or 1908."[1] Here the proportion of extraordinary advances "is probably greater than in the south."
The rise in timber lands would therefore seem to have more than justified the increases in the wholesale price of lumber. Even in the older section, where the timber has been largely cut away, the increases have been rapid. In the newer section, which have recently developed as lumbering regions, the rate of increase in timber land values has been little short of stupendous.
No student can turn away from these records of the increase of timber land values since 1890 without a feeling of profound wonder. Twofold, fivefold, tenfold increases in two decades are immense, even in a developing country. That the price of timber products should have advanced rapidly in view of this tremendous increase in the value of timber land goes without saying.
Timber is in a peculiar position, economically. A hundred years ago it was an obstacle to American progress; to-day it is one of its rapidly vanishing resources. The approaching exhaustion of the timber supply undoubtedly plays a large part in causing the upward trend of prices. Not until the growing of timber is placed on a business basis and the demands of timber users are made commensurate with that business in this country, can a normal adjustment of prices be expected.
Farm land values present no such unusual difficulties as these encountered in the analysis of timber land values. Farming is an established business. The best farm land of the United States is largely under cultivation. If properly pursued, farming does not exhaust the resources of the land—rather it increases them. Hence, the increases in farm land values present an illustration of very normal land value increase.
The material dealing with the increase in farm values is by far the most accessible of all the data on land values in the United States, since the Bureau of the Census makes elaborate returns on the subject. Although these returns are open to some very obvious and often-repeated criticisms, they probably represent, on the whole, a fairly accurate statement of the increase in the value of farm lands in the districts which they cover.
The censuses of 1900 and 1910 give a separate statement of the value of land and buildings. Prior to that time land and buildings were grouped together. The last two censuses therefore furnish as
- ↑ Ibid., p. 215.
