cost per acre of the forest placed under preserve is ten dollars,* and it would require only thirty cents' worth of timber to be taken from each acre per year to meet interest charges and twenty-five cents' worth for sinking fund purposes. It would be hard indeed to imagine a scheme of lumbering or forestry so conservative as to put the annual removal of timber below fifty-five cents per acre, when one recalls the magnificent, pure, unmixed spruce growths which constitute so large a portion of the White Mountain forests which have thus far escaped the axe.

So great is the board's faith, not only in the ultimate benefits of such an investment for the state, but in its immediately happy results, that it has no hesitation in recommending the establishment of a forest preserve sufficient in area to insure the perpetual preservation of the White Mountain forests.

New York has already begun to reap the benefits of such a course. Under the constitution of New York it is impossible to utilize at present any of the timber now standing on the forest preserve, so that any direct revenue from such a source has not yet been realized. But the indirect benefits have been plainly seen in the increased summer hotel business in the region of the Adirondack preserve. Summer visitors can go to the Adirondacks and the Catskills with the perfect assurance that the mountain scenery is not to be ruined by irrational timber cutting. They have no such assurance in visiting the White Mountains, and it is not strange that Adirondack hotel registers now bristle with names that once were regularly found in our own White Mountain hostelries. Our forests are better than New York's from every point of view. They are unparalleled for beauty and unapproached in commercial value. They bear closer relations to our water-courses, and they are worth more to all our interests for preservation.

ANOTHER MEANS.

Another means of securing the same end is one which this board has outlined in a previous report, and which it is

*This is a most reasonable estimate, judging from the experience of the state of New York in a like plan. The cost of Adirondack spruce forests taken by the Forest Preserve Board in New York was less than seven dollars per acre

thought wise to emphasize again, because it is not open to any objection on the ground of excessive cost. Accordingly, the subjoined paragraphs are reprinted from the second biennial report of this board, that report being now very nearly out of print:

"Fifteen years ago New Hampshire, having parted with the last acre of her public domain for small consideration, awoke to the danger that her grantees, if unrestrained, might so use their possessions as to destroy the forestry resources of the commonwealth and inflict irreparable injury upon the health, property, and occupations of all their fellow-citizens. Three successive forestry commissions have been appointed to investigate the forestry conditions of the state, and to report upon the extent and effects of the indiscriminate cutting of wood and timber, the wisdom and necessity for the adoption of forestry laws, and to hold meetings in different parts of the state for discussion of forestry subjects.

"All three of these commissions have reported that the present methods of lumbering, if continued, inevitably will entail baleful scenic, climatic, and economic results; that already the ruthless axeman and wasteful pulp-miller have impaired the scenic attractions of several mountainous districts, and by their denudations apparently have occasioned disastrous floods; that the continued removal of immature trees must limit to one generation the number of crops of forest products that can be harvested, and that the prosperity of both the agricultural and manufacturing industries in our great river basins largely depends upon the perpetuity of the forest in such condition as to preserve its functions as an equalizer of water supply and water flowage.

"This commission would not assume the rôle of an alarmist of the commonwealth, but it is bound to take official notice of the fact that, after fifteen years of forestry agitation, indiscriminate cutting of wood and timber is continued to such an extent as to threaten the exhaustion of our spruce forests within another fifteen years, and to render intermittent the flow of the rivers which are most important to our agricultural

and manufacturing industries, and especially that of the Merrimack.

"Discussion of forestry subjects has sufficed, as has been stated elsewhere, to lead many of our lumbermen and operators, including several important corporations, voluntarily to restrict their cut; but enough owners of large forested areas and operators of pulp-mills still persist in so denuding the White Mountain region, the source and equalizer of all our rivers, as to jeopard the health, property, and occupations of the citizens in other parts of the state, and to impair permanently its economic resources. The number of such owners and operators is relatively'small, but their continued refusal to recognize the just claims of the state, which creates and protects their titles, now raises the question whether they should be allowed longer so to use their own as to injure others. These persons, blind to everything except their immediate pecuniary gain, and deaf to every entreaty to spare immature trees, will continue to stand mute when addressed by any forestry commission until it may command them in the name of the state. Their persistent violation of economic laws is believed by many persons already to have inflicted large losses upon their innocent fellow-citizens. No competent authority will deny that the tendency of their action is to impair permanently the productive power of New Hampshire. The imperative interests, therefore, not only of future generations, but also of the people now living within our borders, demand energetic action by the state to stay the hands of these improvident axemen and pulp-makers.

"The disastrous floods of the past two years warn us that such action should be immediate and radical. This involves the direct interposition of the state in the creation of a forest reservation by the exercise of the power of eminent domain, or in the prohibition of indiscriminate cutting, through the exercise of the police power. The first of these remedies would be complete, but the apparent unreadiness of the people to increase their present burden of taxation forbids any hope of its seasonable adoption.

"This commission, therefore, after due deliberation, deems it to be its duty to recommend the adoption of the other of these

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remedies by the enactment of a statute making it unlawful for any person to cut or remove any spruce, pine, or hemlock tree, unless the same shall be twelve inches in diameter three feet above the ground or fallen, burned, or blighted timber, or any poplar or birch tree, unless the same shall be ten inches in diameter three feet above the ground or fallen, burned, or blighted timber, but providing that such enactment shall not apply to any person cutting wood or timber for his own exclusive, domestic consumption, or to any farmer clearing land for agricultural uses only, not exceeding fifty acres in any one year.

"Such an enactment, efficiently enforced, would, it may be confidently predicted, insure a perpetual series of forest crops for New Hampshire, and the preservation through successive generations of its forest cover in such condition as to enable it to fulfill its function as an equalizer of water supply and water flowage, and so perpetuate the agricultural and manufacturing prosperity of the state.

"Though such restraint upon private greed is urged, because deemed to be necessary for the common weal, its adoption could not fail ultimately to benefit the very persons who seemingly would be hindered and obstructed in the conduct of their lumbering business.

AUTHORITY FOR PROPOSED LEGISLATION.

"Ample constitutional authority for such enactment is believed to exist in the possession by the state of the sovereign power of police. The circumstance that courts confess that it is difficult accurately to define this power, and to mark its proper limits, does not prevent them from affirming that its legislative application may be co-extensive with public health, morals, social order, and property rights, nor cause them to disallow any legislative application of it because novel, if this can be shown to correspond to changed economic, political, or social relations, and to be a necessary and proper means to accomplish the purpose.

""The police of a state, in a comprehensive sense,' according to Judge Cooley (Constitutional Limitations, 6th ed., p. 704),

'embraces its whole system of internal regulation, by which the state seeks not only to preserve the public order and to prevent offenses against the state, but also to establish for the intercourse of citizens with citizens those rules of good manners and good neighborhood which are calculated to prevent a conflict of rights, and to insure to each the uninterrupted enjoyment of his own so far as is reasonably consistent with a like enjoyment of rights by others.'

"Other authoritative descriptions of this power have been given by two of New England's most eminent jurists.

"Redfield, C. J., for the court in Thorpe v. Rutland & B. R. R. Co., 27 Vt. 140, 62 Am. Dec. 625, said: "This police power of the state extends to the protection of the lives, limbs, health, comfort, and quiet of all persons, and the protection of all property within the state. According to the maxim, Sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas, which being of universal application, it must, of course, be within the range of legislative action to define the mode and manner in which every one may so use his own as not to injure others.' The issue in this case was the constitutionality of a statute imposing upon existing railroads the duty of erecting and maintaining cattle guards at all crossings, and the statute was upheld.

"Shaw, C. J., for the court in Com. v. Alger, 7 Cush. (Mass.) 85, said: 'Rights of property, like all other social and conventional rights, are subject to such reasonable limitations in their enjoyment as shall prevent them from being injurious, and to such reasonable restraints and regulations, established by law, as the legislature, under the governing and controlling power vested in them by the constitution, may think necessary and expedient. This is very different from the right of eminent domain, the right of a government to take and appropriate private property to public use, whenever the public exigency requires it; which can be done only on condition of providing a reasonable compensation therefor. The power we allude to is rather the police power, the power vested in the legislature by the constitution to make, ordain, and establish all manner of wholesome and reasonable laws, statutes, and ordinances, either with penalties or without, not repugnant to the constitution,