FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 163 



of the forests, that few persons realize that any better way is prac- 

 ticable, even if it were desirable. The forest« have been in nearly all 

 cases treated as a mine, to be cut off till exhausted and then use the soil 

 for other crops or abandon the land altogether. In very many instances 

 this should not be the case. The burden of my talk is in reference to 

 preserving the small young trees which already have a fine start. It will 

 not be long before such will be valuable, in fact they have a prospective 

 value after the larger trees have been removed. No other product of 

 the soil of the State or United States begins to compare in value with 

 that received from our forests, and yet we are leaving the subject to the 

 speculators or the business men who are interested in little else than 

 getting their money out of the timber. The State is interested in the 

 future of the forest as well as in the present. 



FOREST WARDENS NEEDED. 



We have a set of officers to look after the protection of game in our 

 State. We have a fish commissioner empowered to replenish the waters 

 of our lakes with young fish. I doubt not it is a valuable investment for 

 the State. We have laws to compel men to remove peach trees affected 

 with the yellows or plum tree affected with the black knot, or to 

 destroy canker worms which strip the leaves from apple orchards. But 

 what are we doing to enhance the value of our forests for the future? 

 From one-fourth to one-third of the money value of the crops taken each 

 year from the soil of the United States is derived from the forests. Con- 

 sidering its paramount importance, Michigan is doing nothing in this 

 direction of saving the young trees, yet she is peculiarly adapted to grow- 

 ing timber to perfection, and, in my opinion,- large areas of our State 

 should be continually kept growing trees. So far as caring for their for- 

 ests are concerned, other states all about us show more enterprise — 

 true, it is scarcely more than ten years since the first one of them, New 

 York, began systematically to organize a department for preventing for- 

 est fires. 



Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, 

 New York, Ohio, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Kansas, Colorado, California, 

 are undertaking more than Michigan in the preservation of young timber. 

 In Pennsylvania and in New York the people have organized state socie- 

 ties, each of which publishes a very creditable sheet devoted to forestry. 

 Several states have a system of fire wardens who are to prevent fires or 

 extinguish them when one is started. 



In 1887 the legislature of Michigan ventured to appropriate one thou- 

 sand dollars to defraying the expenses of a forest commission, but in a 

 streak of economy (?) the legislature of 1891 repealed the act. To support 

 a system of fire wardens would cost the State a little something. Will 

 it pay, or had we better continue as we have been doing in the past? 

 Shall we leave the whole to the judgment of the people in each neighbor- 

 hood? Let us see if a commission could not save to the State every year 

 more than 100 times its cost. If that be the case, and I think it is, it is 

 folly to delay longer. It is criminal neglect to withhold the payment of 

 a tax of one dollar, if by its use one hundred or more dollars could be 

 saved. 



