INDIANA HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY, 54? 



City, you practically never see any more real forests until you get just 

 below Mackinaw. You will see the same thing unless you go farther 

 north. Of this land we have, as I have said, millions of acres. We have 

 all kinds of people in our country, and some that are not fit to live 

 there. I believe too much in the State of Michigan, and that is exactly 

 why I am doing what I am doing. We have had these millions of acres 

 of land left in these conditions for years and years. Just think of it, 

 and think what a loss it is to the State of Michigan. The land in the 

 southern peninsula has not produced any timber for ten or twenty years, 

 for the simple reason that fire came along and swept down what nature 

 had tried to produce. Thus we have perhaps ten million dollars' loss per 

 year, which means in twenty years a sum big enough to buy all the 

 woodlands up there. And we have lost it, not because it could not be 

 helped, but simply because the people of Michigan never realized what 

 thej' were losing. They were just like the people who are not in this 

 convention today. They should go at these things just as a business 

 man does. Just think of what a single forest fire does. And yet the 

 State has never employed a single man whose business it should be to 

 guard against the fires. We had a law about '46 which made a man a 

 supervisor of a township, and he was asked to do everything. How 

 could he succeed? One man can't attend to all this. 



You can readily see from the conditions of the pinery forests that 

 I have described that it would not be veiy agreeable to have to pay 

 taxes on such lands, and the consequence is that most of the old lumber 

 companies have left the lands and let them revert back to the State 

 for taxes. Today the State of Michigan is in a most remarkable con- 

 dition on this account. Just to put the case in a terse way, one-sixth 

 part of the State of Michigan is in soak for taxes. Now the State has 

 tried to do something with these lands that would be for the good of the 

 people. They have tried to get men to take homesteads. I will tell 

 you how they take them. A man looks around through a forest until 

 he locates a cedar swamp which is worth five or six hundred dollars, 

 then he hangs around until he gets the title to the land, and that very 

 day, perhaps, sells it to some lumber company. And that is the end of 

 that homestead, and the State unfortunately allows him to take another 

 one when he gets another cedar swamp located. We have tried another 

 thing. The law of the State says that these lands should be sold, and 

 in order not to hamper the man who buys, shall be sold at a price set by 

 the man in charge. Fortunately we have honest men in our State. That 

 is more than some people can say. 



Prof. Latta: We have some, too. 



Prof. Roth: I am perfectly satisfied. I say that we have honest men 

 because they refrain from giving these lands away. They have tried 

 to sell the lands and get them on the tax rolls. Last fall eighty thousand 



