FARMS VS. FORESTS. 

 P. S. LOVEJOY. 



One-third of Michigan is today hanlsrupt. Over ten million of the State's 

 thirty-six million acres are laying as waste and idle, desolate and non-pro- 

 ductive, as ever the Germans left Picardy. "Within a few years the wasted 

 lands of France will be salvaged and will be again be put to work. For 

 long decades yet to come, Michigan will have her millions of acres of non- 

 productive lands. 



It is high time that this situation were considered frankly, for its public 

 consideration has usually lacked candor, and, too often, even a decent mea- 

 sure of common truthfulness. Michigan has a problem of physical recon- 

 struction quite comparable with that of France. 



Michigan is not alone in this condition. There are today 228.509.000 

 acres of logged-off, cut-over, fire-ravaged acres of slash lands in the United 

 States. Georgia has twenty million acres, and Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, 

 Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Carolina. Texas and 

 Wisconsin have each more than ten million acres.^ 



The aggregate of the cut-over lands of the United States represents an 

 area ten times that of of Iowa. 



This is no new discovery and no new problem, but constantly it becomes 

 more difficult, more urgent and more specific. Ten times the area of Iowa 

 within the humid part of the United States is cut-over land and the cut-over 

 area is .growing at a rate of around 20.000 acres every twenty-four hours !^ 



The Ohio valley was originally an almost solid hardwood forest. As 

 the country was settled the forests were destroyed, and in their place, devel- 

 oped fertile farms. On the average, fertile farms developed, but, very often, 

 in spite of the settler's labors or because of them, no farm developed because 

 the land eroded, or because the farm could not support a family.' 



In any case, the precedent for farm following forest was well established 

 until it became almost an axiom, usually a fixed assumption, often an obsession. 

 Today it is almost universally taken for granted that the logged-off lands 

 will be used for agriculture — that they must be used for agriculture — that 

 anything which tends to hasten the process of gettin stump-land into culti- 

 vation must be desirable. 



Agriculture is, of course, the very backbone of the nation. It does not 

 follow, however, that all agricultural practice is desirable. Let us say, 

 rather that all permanently profitable agriculture is desirable. 



^Report of Secretary of the Interior, 1918. 



^The annual lumber cut of the country is around forty billion feet ; the average 

 cut per acre 5-10 M ft. b. m. 



^For a typical instance see account of the Lincoln family experience, Tarbell, 

 "Lincoln," Vol. 1, pp. 17, 45. 



