The Balance Sheet

Although cameralists had in common with forest scientists a faith in numbers as worth a thousand words of old forestry, their underlying assumptions differed. Oettelt, Hossfeld, and Cotta saw management as dependent on mathematics, not the reverse: "the workings of nature and mathematical truths do not subjugate themselves to words of authority."^[61] Even kings and ministers had to bow to this ruler of the kingdom of reason.

Officials in the fiscal bureaucracy with broader responsibilities than the forester's showed less enthusiasm for the ultimate rule of mathematics in forestry science. They clearly appreciated numbers as the rudimentary facts of accurate inventory and accounting. Sophisticated forest management provided efficient tools for monitoring the quantities that the state bureaucracy sought to control from year to year. If expressed coherently in numbers, represented clearly in charts

[57] Cotta, Systematische Anleitung , 166.

[58] Ibid., 116.

[59] Cotta, Anweisung zur Forst-Einrichtung , 58.

[60] Ibid., 79–80; Cotta, Systematische Anleitung , 123.

[61] F.A.L. von Burgsdorf, "Abhandlung von den eigentlichen Theilen und Gränzen der systematischen, aus ihren wahren Quellen hergeleiteten, Experimentalund höhern Forstwissenschaft," Berlinische Gesellschaft naturforschender Freunde, Schriften, 4 (1783), 123.

and tables, and placed in the hands of the cognizant minister at court, these vital signs eased the task of keeping the body economic healthy, much as a thermometer aids the physician. To the cameralist, the role of quantification in forestry science was descriptive, not prescriptive.

A common denominator nonetheless related the disparate values that scientists and cameralists attached to quantitative information. The annual accounting of the bureaucrat had to be linked with a long-term plan of resource management based on scientific principles. One prominent Forstwissenschaftler , Friedrich von Burgsdorf, called the common problem "keeping the forest's books," and defined procedures to follow in terms of the quantities of interest to forestry science.^[62] The bond between forestry science and cameralism was the conversion from an amount of wood to its value. From that point, the practitioners could go their separate ways, the cameral official to the preparation of the Geld-Etat , or monetary budget, and the forestry scientist to the Forst-Etat , the budget that compared the yield to what the forest could bear over time.

Hartig described the task of creating the Forst-Etat as seeking an equilibrium, as opposed to the bottom line in a fiscal budget. "Where a sure balance sheet of forest use, based on mathematics and natural philosophy, is lacking, wood will always be over- or underutilized."^[63] In the former case, balance would have to be restored through conservation, raising more land for the forests, or abandoning a less vital productive arm of the economy; in the latter, by exporting lumber or founding new industries. Hartig used terms like "forest use budget" and "natural forest budget" to describe the related components of planning and biological growth that concerned the forester in his effort to balance supply and demand.^[64] Hossfeld likewise spoke of budgets and balances. He explicitly identified forestry assessment with the process of evaluating disturbances to the equilibrium of the forest, whether natural (fires and pests) or artificial (management). After calculating the magnitude of these disturbances, the forester

[62] Ibid., 113.

[63] Hartig, Grundsätze der Forst-Direction , 64.

[64] Ibid.: e.g., "Forstbenutzungs-Etat," 65, 86; "Natural-Forst-Etat," 144.

could prescribe means for restoring the equilibrium of growth and yield over time.^[65] The image of the budget, whether of nature or gold, linked forestry, cameralism, and quantification, as foresters learned to manage both the Forst-Etat and the Geld-Etat according to the books.

As we have seen, the books themselves consisted largely of numbers. Hartig wrote hundreds of pages on the gathering of data, calculations, and organization of charts and tables necessary for the production of ledgers; the charts mimicked the columnar arrangement of the accountant's books.^[66] Hartig and Cotta both offered book-length examples of their methods of forest bookkeeping, complete with templates for the tables they had used.^[67] In general, journals and records kept by low-level foresters were to be turned in quarterly to the supervising forester in each district, who compiled and summarized. A Forst-Rentmeister would calculate the monetary budget from these and parallel records according to prescribed forms, while the Forest Commission, consisting of higher financial officials, would review, analyze, and summarize. According to Ernst Friedrich Hartig, Georg's younger brother and colleague, the results concerning consumption, production, and distribution of wood could thereby be arranged so that "the balance in every forest, district, administrative region, and province can be easily reviewed at a glance."^[68] The recurring themes of equilibrium and the balance sheet harmonized with those of administrative convenience and scientific resource management.