202 TWENTY-FIRST REPORT. 



Attemps to farm lands which cannot return a decent living, or the farming 

 of lands so as to lead to the ruin of the soil itself, as by erosion, are certainly 

 undesirable on every count. "To the State, any kind of 'pauper' industry 

 or industry in which people cannot make fair wages and a fair living, is an 

 injury. Of these pauper industries, the farming of non-agricultural land is 

 the worst.* 



Logging proceeds rapidly. Even imder very favorable circumstances, agri- 

 cultural development follows lumbering at a tardy pace. Between lumbering 

 and farming there is an average hiatus of decades, under present conditions, 

 perhaps approximating fifty years. Where conditions are not favorable for 

 farming, the interval is indefinitely extended.' 



This situation places great burdens on the early settlers who need tax 

 money for roads and schools and administrative expenses. These burdens are 

 out of all proportion to the current value of their improved property. As a 

 rule, therefore, timber being the only immediately valuable asset of the region, 

 the timber owners must pay. Soon the tax rate forces the hurried cutting 

 of the timber to prevent its confiscation by taxes. With less timber left, the 

 tax rate must rise again. Presently the timber is gone and the new community 

 must adjust itself to different conditions, economic, fiscal, social, as respects 

 transportation and political preferment. 



Not at all infrequently the result is the abandonment of whole towns and 

 the practical desertion of whole counties.*^ 



Erosion of lands, which should never have been cleared of their forests, 

 results similarly in the deterioration and often in the complete destruction of 

 farms and farming communities. This waste already amounts to more than 

 4,000,000 aci-es, the equivalent of 100,000 farms, or the complete bankruptcy 

 of 100,000 farmers.' 



The fatuous assumption that a farm can go wherever a forest can go is 

 exhibited throughout the New England country — in the Appalachians, in the 

 Ozarks and generally in mountainous regions. One can find old stone walls 

 zig-zagging through the beech woods on the Palisades of New York and saw- 

 log pine standing between old cotton furrrows in the Carolinas. Jack-pine 

 is now crowding into the clearings of thousands of deserted lake states farm- 

 steads. It is seldom that such things are made of record. At best, direct 

 records are sketchy and hesitating, but they are to be found.' 



It would be Interesting to inquire into the occasions for such reticence 

 concerning farming failures. One may find libraries of reports upon slums 



"Roth, Forest Valuation, 1916, p. 132. 



''Shattauek, Idaho Experiment Station Bulletin !)t, 1916. Forbes, Proceedings 

 Southern Lodging Congress, 1917, p. 50. 

 «Dana, U. S. D. A., Hull. 638, 1918. 

 'U. S. D. A. Yearbook, 1916. 

 'Whitney, U. S. D. A. Report 70, 1901. 



Report Commission of Inquiry, Michigan, 1908. 



F. C. Howe, "High Cost of Living," 1918. 



Dana, 10c. cit. 



