HARDWOOD RECORD 



23 



Proposed Michigan Forestry Association. 



Thornton A. Green of Ontonagon, assisted by 

 Prof. Roth of Ann Arbor, state forest warden, 

 and Charles W. Garfield of Grand Rapids, presi- 

 dent of the Michigan Forestry Commission, is 

 meeting with success in securing a large and 

 representative body of citizens of the state, 

 from the governor down, to become charter 

 members of the Michigan Forestry Association 

 which will be organized at Mackinac Island this 

 summer. Mi". Green is in charge of the Mc- 

 Millan limber interests in the upper peninsula 

 and is an enthusiast in forestry matters. He 

 was in charge cf the work of gathering the 

 state exhibit for the forestry building at the 

 St. Louis exposition. 



A bill, prepared largely by Mr. Garfield, is 

 now before the legislature, seeking to inaugu- 

 rate a business policy in handling the state tax 

 lands, and Prof. Roth thus summarizes the ob- 

 jects sought : 



1. The bill contains and involves not a single 

 radically new point, but merely modifies and 

 simplities the existing law in keeping with the 

 experience of the last twenty years. It involves 

 no additional expense but saves the state many 

 thousands per year. 



2. The bill modifies four points, as follows : 



a. The transfer of tax title lands to the state. 



b. The examination of these lands. 



c. The disposition of the lands. 



d. The establishment of the minimum price 

 in selling these lands. 



3. The transfer of the land to the state after 

 they have been delinquent for Ave years is as- 

 sumed in the existing law, but the spirit of the 

 law has been violated for years. 



Instead of transfer to The state the auditor 

 general's office has for a quarter of a century 

 held such lands and advertised them yearly, 

 spending money in a way which certainly ap- 

 pears unlawful. 



To illustrate : A forty-acre tract of land, 

 worth $10, is advertised at 40 cents per year 

 and requires additional expense of bookkeeping, 

 bringing up the cost easily to 80 cents. This 

 is kept up for twenty years, and thus the value 

 of the land is spent uselessly (and apparently 

 in an unlawful manner). 



An extreme case of this kind is presented in 

 the Higgins Lake resort lots. A Chicago con- 

 cern sells these lots by the thousand, they revert 

 for taxes, no one ever building or using them, 

 and today several thousand are ready to be 

 passed through this auditor general's hopper. 

 And lots, dear at 10 cents apiece, cost the state 

 -lu cuts a year for advertising alone. 



Far better for the state to pay this money as 

 a tax to town and county and thus produce at 

 least some improvement. 



That this is not a small matter appears from 

 the auditor general's report, which indicates 

 that over $800,000 have been spent t largely 

 wasted) in the live years, 1S98-1902. 



The bill merely demands that the spirit of 

 the law be followed, that transfer be actually 

 made at the end of five years. 



4. The examination of appraisal of the lands 

 is required by the existing law. These ap- 

 iHuisals have in tbe past been notoriously in- 

 accurate and incomplete. The land office has 

 no record to show that a given forty-acre tract 

 is swamp or dry land, forest or bare, clay or 

 sand, agricultural or forest land. There ap- 

 pears to be no record that the appraisal was 

 ever based on actual examination of the forty 

 itself as the spirit of the present law' evidently 

 calls for. 



The bill merely demands that this examina- 

 tion be actually made, that the examiner act- 

 ually see each forty and description, and that he 

 record and report such important facts, before 

 mentioned, as would enable the land commission- 

 er to act intelligently in the sale of these lands. 

 In addition it provides that these reports be 

 sworn to and that the examiner be bonded, in 

 that more reliable work be secured. That 

 the present method of appraisal has led to 



waste is clearly illustrated in certain large land 

 deals, where lands were sold at 38 cents, when 

 the timber alone was worth over $1 per acre. 

 And the sane- condition is leading to the unwise 

 sale of timber covered swamp lauds at nominal 

 prices, causing merely the denudation and sub- 

 sequent reversion of these lands, helping neither 

 town nor county and working lasting harm in 

 a direction where the state can ill afford it. 



5. The disposition of these lands under the 

 present law takes place in three distinct ways: 



a. By homestead. 



b. By sale with an arbitrary minimum fixed 

 either by the laud commissioner or the commis- 

 sioner and the auditor general jointly. 



c. By application and at a minimum not be- 

 low the appraiser's valuation. 



The homestead provision, while not without 

 its faults, may as well be continued, and the 

 bill makes no modification of this whatever. 

 The method of sale at a price the minimum of 

 which is discretionary with the officer in charge 

 is certainly most extraordinary. If the land 

 commissioner and the auditor general should 

 choose to do so, there is nothing in the present 

 law which forbids their selling a million dol- 

 lar's worth of public lands at $100 ; that this 

 system has been criticised and the rumors of 

 fraud, of collusion, of actual interest in land 

 deals, on the part of the land commissioner and 

 his office are evidence that people who know 

 about these methods think them dangerous to 

 say the least. 



The bill retains the second method of sale, 

 namely, by actual application, as now provided 

 for, and abandons the other method just ex- 

 plained. The bill also retains the idea of a max- 

 imum number of acres to be sold to any one 

 person, and also the idea of a minimum fixed 

 by appraisal or actual examination. 



6. The minimum price at which lands can 

 be sold under existing laws is not fixed by any 

 reasonable or safe method. It is stated in 

 Sec. 131 : 



a. That the land commissioner shall fix it. 



b. That the land commissioner and auditor 

 general together shall hx it. 



c. That it shall be the price set by the ap- 

 praisal. 



In no case is this minimum thus fixed based 

 on any actual bona fide examination or on any 

 reliable knowledge, and the minimum fixed in 

 these various ways is unbusinesslike and unfair 

 and deserving the odium it now bears. 



For this reason the bill provides for a mini- 

 mum of .$5 per acre for the land alone, this 

 amount being based on the following considera- 

 tions : 



a. Lands not worth $5 are not farm lands in 

 Michigan, and should not be offered to tempt 

 the unwise and the unscrupulous. 



b. This minimum will segregate the good from 

 the poor lands. 



c. It will do away with one of the most un- 

 savory features of the present land disposal. 



d. It will discourage unscrupulous, specula- 

 tive and fraudulent persons in their nefarious 

 work. 



e. Five dollars is a reasonable minimum, if 

 compared with prices elsewhere. 



The United States gets $2.50 for arid lauds 

 in the west. Washington, Montana and Wyom- 

 ing have a $10 minimum, and it works well. 



Pennsylvania buys back denuded, wild lands 

 at prices up to $5. 



All pinery lands are worth $5 to the state 

 to grow timber on. 



f. Sale and advertisement of Michigan lands 

 at low prices are a discredit to the state, which 

 has even gone abroad to Europe, throwing a bad 

 light on our state. 



g. A minimum fixed by law is the only safe- 

 guard against bad business in the disposal of 

 lands and the only means to prevent undue 

 pressure being brought to bear on the land 

 commissioner's office to waste the property of 

 the state. 



h. This minimum may retain some lands per- 



manently in the state, but with the present 

 tendency of a fixed forest policy this can be only 

 of help and be no detriment to the state. 



i. Low prices have injured holders of pri- 

 vate lands; brought contempt and consequent 

 recklessness in the ttiinds of the people with 

 regard to these lands. 



The Priraer of Forestry. 



As a source of positive information about 

 what forestry really is, and to spread a knowl- 

 edge of its methods, a book has been prepared 

 by Gitt'ord Pinchot, Forester of the United States 

 Department of Agriculture and Chief of the 

 Bureau of Forestry, entitled "A Primer of For- 

 estry," which is published in two parts. Part 

 I was issued in 1899 and has passed through 

 several editions, reaching a circulation of about 

 225,000 copies. It deals with the life of a single 

 tree, with trees as they exist in a forest, with 

 the life of a forest, and with the enemies of 

 the forest. 



Part II of the Primer has just been published. 

 It deals with "Practical Forestry," the pur- 

 pose of which is defined as "to make the forest 

 render its best service to man in such a way 

 as to increase rather than to diminish its use- 

 fulness in the future." In other words, it 

 means "both the use and the preservation of 

 the forest." 



Chapter 1 of Part II tells of the varied uses 

 of the forest ; specifies the four requisites if 

 the forest is to yield good returns under man- 

 agement — protection, strong and abundant repro- 

 duction, regular supply of ripe trees, and grow- 

 ing space sufficient for each tree ; discusses the 

 yield of a forest, describing how it is deter- 

 mined and showing that it must keep even pace 

 with the growth ; and concludes by describing 

 the different systems of cutting trees in such a 

 way as to get the best returns rrom the for- 

 est, while at the same time improving its use- 

 fulness. 



The second chapter discusses "Work in the 

 Woods." Conservative and ordinary lumber- 

 ing are contrasted, and the great superiority of 

 conservative work is shown. Information and 

 suggestions are given on the work from the time 

 the tree is found standing in the forest until 

 it passes through some distant mill. The chap- 

 ter is intensely practical and indicates changes 

 in present lumbering methods which wiil make 

 for the advantage of the forest. 



Chapter III is entitled "The Weather and the 

 Streams." It discusses the influence forests have 

 on climate, and explains in detail the effect 

 of forest cover on temperature, moisture, evap- 

 oration, rainfall and fallen rain. One of the 

 most vitally important functions of the forest is 

 to restrain the fallen rain, to prevent erosion 

 of the soil, and to store away the water for 

 gradual use iu the futiire. 



Chapter IV, the last, is a short sketch of the 

 history of forestry abroad and at home. Im- 

 portant eveuts in forestry iu this country are 

 recorded down to the first of the year. The 

 showing of the United States in this field is 

 behind that of every other civilized nation. Still 

 initial steps of high promise have recently been 

 taken, and there can be no question but that 

 the development of a truly American system of 

 forest management, adjusted to our own condi- 

 tions, is now fairly under way. 



Part II of the Primer supplements Part I, and 

 the two together give the fundamentals of for- 

 estry in the tersest and most compact form. 

 Part II is illustrated by eighteen plates and 

 forty-seven figures. In typographical execution 

 and general appearance it is an exact counter- 

 part of Part I. The books will be read with 

 profit by everyone who takes a practical inter- 

 est in the forests and who wishes to see them 

 protected and properly developed as one of the 

 greatest resources of the nation, and should as 

 well interest every student: of practical lumber 

 affairs. 



