ful kicker."

With woodland the case is still worse. Each year the owner may have
to pay a tax on the merchantable crops of many past years. It is as
though the owner of plowland had to pay a tax on the value of his
field crops twice a week throughout the growing season. When a
full-grown tree is cut down or burned up in a forest fire, it may
have been taxed 40 or 50 times over. Each year the land on which it
grew has been valued not on the basis of its earning power, but on
the basis of what it would bring if sold, timber and all. A tax
levied on the income-earning value of the land would be much more
equitable.

Certain states have applied this principle by legislation under
which land to be used for growing timber can be classified so that
the timber can be taxed separately from the land. The land there is
taxed annually on its value, without timber. The tax on the timber
is not paid until the crop is harvested. It is therefore a tax on
the yield. In New York this yield tax is 5 per cent of the value of
the crop harvested; Michigan 5 per cent of it; Massachusetts 6 per
cent; and Vermont, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania 10 per cent, with
different provisions for forests already established.

Such a method is much better than that adopted by a number of states
which exempt, under certain conditions, reforested or reforesting
lands for a term of years, or allow rebates or bounties on such
lands.

The profit of a growing forest crop will depend largely on relief
from excessive taxation. It is unthrifty public policy to discourage
putting waste land to work. ("The Farm Woodlot Problem," by Herbert
A. Smith, Editor Forest Service--from Yearbook of Department of
Agriculture for 1914.)

CHAPTER XXIII

SOME PRACTICAL EXPERIMENTS

The Department of Agriculture at Washington, also Cornell University
and various other schools publish special studies and monographs of
different branches. For some a small charge is made, but they are
mostly distributed free. Many of them are very valuable. The United
States Department's pamphlet on the Diseases of the Violet is a
notable example. The average person does not know how these can be
obtained or even that they exist.

The Department's Year Books are most interesting reading, and both
its Professors and the state colleges will answer particular
questions of citizens.

These and the various United States and State Experiment Station
publications will serve instead of