. Within a generation this
expenditure has grown into a valuable asset which yielded a
return of $34.09 a year on the investment.

[Illustration: ON POOR SOIL TREES SUCH AS THESE ARE MORE
PROFITABLE THAN FARM CROPS ]

A New York farmer who plays square with his woodland realizes a
continuous profit of $1 a day from a 115-acre timber tract. The
annual growth of this well-managed farm forest is .65 cords of
wood per acre, equivalent to 75 cords of wood--mostly tulip
poplar--a year. The farmer's profit amounts to $4.68 a cord, or a
total of $364.50 from the entire timber tract. Over in New
Hampshire, an associate sold a two-acre stand of white pine--this
was before the inflated war prices were in force--for $2,000 on
the stump. The total cut of this farm forest amounted to 254
cords equivalent to 170,000 board feet of lumber. This was an
average of about 85,000 feet an acre. The trees were between
eighty and eighty-five years old when felled. This indicates an
annual growth on each acre of about 1,000 feet of lumber. The
gross returns from the sale of the woodland crops amounted to
$12.20 an acre a year. These, of course, are not average
instances.

Farmers should prize their woodlands because they provide
building material for fences and farm outbuildings as well as for
general repairs. The farm woodland also supplies fuel for the
farm house. Any surplus materials can be sold in the form of
standing timber, sawlogs, posts, poles, crossties, pulpwood,
blocks or bolts. The farm forest also serves as a good windbreak
for the farm buildings. It supplies shelter for the livestock
during stormy weather and protects the soil against erosion.
During slack times, it provides profitable work for the farm
hands.

There are approximately one-fifth of a billion acres of farm
woodlands in the United States. In the eastern United States
there are about 169,000,000 acres of farmland forests. If these
woodlands could be joined together in a solid strip one hundred
miles wide, they would reach from New York to San Francisco. They
would amount to an area almost eight times as large as the
combined forests of France which furnished the bulk of the timber
used by the Allies during the World War.

In the North, the farm woodlands compose two-fifths of all the
forests. Altogether there are approximately 53,000,000 acres of
farm woodlots which yield a gross income of about $162,000,000
annually to their owners. Surveys show that in the