"White pine occurred originally in commercial quantities in Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. The cut has probably exceeded that of any other species. Several timber trees have a wider commercial range, and at the present time two yield more lumber yearly--Douglas fir and longleaf pine--but white pine was the leader in the market for two hundred and fifty years. Though to-day the original forests of this species are mere fragments of what they once were, the second growth in small regions is meeting heavy demand. In Massachusetts, for example, the cut in 1908 was two hundred and thirty-eight million feet, and practically all of it was second growth. It is not improbable that a similar cut can be made every year in the future from the natural growth of white pine in that state. It might be shown by a simple calculation that if one-tenth of the original white pine region were kept in well-protected second growth, like that in Massachusetts, it would yield annual crops, successfully for all time, as large as the white pine cut in the United States in 1908. To do this would require the growth of only twenty-five cubic feet of wood per acre each year, and good white pine growth will easily double that amount. The supply of white pine lumber need never fail in this country, provided a moderate area is kept producing as a result of proper care. "During the past thirty years the largest cut of white pine has come from the Lake States, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota." It is shown in the government's reports that forty-eight per cent of the total lumber output of the United States in 1908 was pine. If something near this ratio is to be maintained, it must be by planting and growing the trees. Under the present system of taxation, neither individuals nor corporations will undertake the work. The investment, at the shortest, is one of thirty years before returns may be looked for, while twice that time is better business. Owners of pine forests are obliged now, and have been in past years, to cut their timber lands clean because of excessive taxation. To encourage the planting and cultivation of new pine forests, it would be better to levy no tax upon the individual's or corporation's young trees until the time that the timber has grown to a size fit to be marketed, and then only on that portion which is cut into lumber. Even with this encouragement it is an enterprise that belongs largely to the state, and from it must emanate the aggressive movement upon land belonging to the state.