FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 75 



Forestry is a part of agriculture ; both raise a crop from the land. The 

 crop of the forest is wood,* and like wheat it is one of the staple products 

 now, has always been, and will be so in the future. Millions of people 

 get on without wheat; none without wood. The amount of wood 

 used is enormous, and civilization has not helped us to economize; we are 

 using more wood to each person than we ever did. We here in the State of 

 Michigan use as much as anybody, and we believe in using wood, for 

 whenever the farmer has to scrimp on improvements because timber is too 

 high; whenever our towns have to be built of brick and stone because 

 lumber is too dear ; whenever our factories have to leave the State because 

 they can't get timber, one of the greatest factors in the prosperity of our 

 State is gone. 



We use in our State about one billion feet of timber besides fuel, and 

 even now we are importing. We pay a high price and- a higher railroad 

 fare on shingles from the Pacific coast, and on yellow pine, cypress and 

 hardwoods from the South. The capital invested in lumbering in our 

 State in 1890 was over 90 per cent, greater than it was in 1900, and the 

 cut was proportionate. When Hon. James Wilson became Secretary of 

 Agriculture, he said, "We use enormous quantities of sugar; why not 

 raise it?" We use an enormous amount of timber; why not raise it? is 

 the question we ask. Have we no land, or will timber not grow ?Neither. 

 The white pine of Michigan was famous ; the oak of Michigan made Grand 

 Kapids one of the great furniture centers of the land. But how about the 

 land? The farmers in the Avell-settled, real farm counties of the State 

 still have about six million acres which their good sense has prevented 

 them from clearing. They are raising some timber, and they will raise 

 more and better timber as time goes on, Michigan but yesterday was one 

 of the greatest lumber-producing districts of the world, and today a 

 contractor way up at Manistee fills a bill with North Carolina pine. This 

 ought not to be. Michigan should export and not import timber. There 

 is land to do even this. Our State is one of the leading agricultural 

 states, but is, like most districts in the- world, not all plowland. And let 

 us be thankful that this is so. A good one-third of our farming counties 

 are unimproved land, mostly woodlots. About 9.^ per cent, of the other 

 half of the State is still unimproved and 87 per cent, is not even settled. 

 Unfortunately, this is not woodlot, but is, as most of you know, to a con- 

 siderable extent cut-over and burned-over pinery land. About six million 

 acres of these lands, i. e., one-sixth of the land area of the State, is delin- 

 quent, is "in soak" for taxes. The State has tried to encourage settle- 

 ment by selling these lands cheaply. Of late the State has started in a 

 new direction ; it has set aside a small parcel of this land and said, let us 

 protect it against fire and let us improve it and see if we cannot get back 

 some of our much-needed forest. This met with opposition. The two 

 main arguments were : 



1. The land is good enough for farming; why make woods of it? 



2. You reserve a large body of land in our county and thus deprive us 

 of the possibility of ever getting taxes, and yet you expect us few pioneers 

 to keep up a decent county and town government. 



Both arguments were sound. The first is sound, but based on misun- 

 derstanding of the law. The law does not and never did contemplate 

 reserving all lands and preventing settlement of good farm lands. The 

 Commissioner can sell or exchange good farm lands. All the law does 



