656 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



applications to be checked up, requests 

 for grazing application blanks or rangers' 

 requisitions for supplies. 



By the time she has laid out her 

 day's work, it is time to take dictation, 

 and the round begins again. Thus 



day follows day. each full of interesting 

 details, each different from the last, 

 and all worth while, because the clerk 

 in a field office of the Forest vService 

 feels herself to be a part of The Game, 

 not just a cog in a machine. 



THE FORESTRY ISSUE IN THE 



LAKE STATES 



By H. H. Chapman 



NOWHERE in the Eastern States 

 has there been greater interest 

 displayed in forestry than in 

 the States of Michigan, Wis- 

 consin and Minnesota. The public 

 consciousness has been keenly aware of 

 the extensive denudations by lumber- 

 men, transforming many forest areas 

 into barren plains. Forest fires, sweep- 

 ing over these level lands, have attained 

 a speed and fierceness unknown in 

 mountain regions, and on several 

 occasions, notably at Hinckley, Minne- 

 sota, in 1894, and at Baudette, 

 Minnesota, in 1910, have resulted in 

 great loss of life as well as property. 



The stimulus thus given to popular 

 interest in fire protection and forestry 

 would long ago have brought about an 

 advanced state of development of 

 public forest reserves, were it not for 

 an insidious undertow constantly work- 

 ing to discredit the movement by 

 misrepresentation and breaking out in 

 open hostility at the least provocation. 

 This opposition is directed against the 

 use of lands for forest production. Its 

 advocates include interests which deal 

 in wild lands, and who on general 

 principles oppose scientific land classi- 

 fication as tending to bring the agri- 

 cultural possibilities of a region into 

 disrepute. If the public accepts the 

 statements of these land dealers they 

 will be forced to believe that not an 

 acre of non-agricultural land exists in 

 the three Lake States, and that the 

 moral right of land speculators to sell 

 any land whatever to prospective settlers 

 is unquestioned. 



Such representations are eagerly ac- 

 cepted by townspeople and practically 



all classes who depend for their own 

 prosperity upon the upbuilding of a 

 region through development of farming 

 and may even be echoed by farmers and 

 settlers in their desire to secure increased 

 population and a more extensive dis- 

 tribution of the tax burden. Hence the 

 strength of this fundamental opposition 

 to State Forest reserves need occasion 

 no surprise. 



But if our civilization in America is 

 to progress, or even maintain itself, the 

 unregulated exploitation of the weak by 

 the strong, the ignorant by the un- 

 scrupulous, must cease. An economic 

 fact cannot be suppressed by merely 

 denying it. Results speak for them- 

 selves. One of the deepest truths dem- 

 onstrated by centuries, in the most 

 densely populated nations of the Oid 

 World, is that there exists much land 

 too poor to be successfully farmed. 

 The one profitable use for such land is 

 forest production. The result of efforts 

 to farm non-agricultural soils is im- 

 poverishment, discouragement and ac- 

 tual pauperization, leading finally to 

 the creation of a race which is wholly 

 incompetent. Fortunately, the extreme 

 results, in the Lake States, have not 

 had time to manifest themselves or are 

 prevented by the mobility of the 

 popiolation. Instead of being prevented 

 from seeking other fields, as so often 

 happened in absence of transportation 

 in earlier ages, the unfortunate victims 

 of land hunger, after exhausting their 

 resoiu*ces, abandon the farm and the 

 mortgage, and drift elsewhere, perhaps 

 to the slums of some city. If of 

 superior stock, they may even profit by 

 their experience and get a start on 



