GoO JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



No illustration of the danger in disregarding these widely prevalent 

 ideas can better that of the Wisconsin fiasco. After years of favorable 

 legislation, the appropriation of large sums for administration, fire 

 control, and planting; after legislative authority for the trading and 

 purchase of lands to make up a State Forest Reserve, the entire pro- 

 gram was smashed by a State supreme court decision,* the case being 

 instigated and carried up primarily because the settlers and communi- 

 ties within the boundaries of the proposed reserve believed the creation 

 of the reserve to be an intolerable menace to their continued agricultural 

 development. 



The logical antagonism of the early settler for the forest, as an 

 incubus which must be removed before he could prosper, grades off to 

 the attitude of the average farmer toward his woodlot. Where soil or 

 slope make agriculture even a bare possibility, he regards his trees 

 rather as trespassers, and looks forward to the day when he may run 

 his plow from fence to fence or at least get some pasture where the 

 shade is now too dense for grass. Such an ambition is not predicated 

 upon any serious regard for the actual earning capacity of the land 

 under timber, as compared with other crops ; it is a general, ingrained 

 prejudice against the trees and in favor of what is assumed, rightly or 

 otherwise, to be a higher and more profitable use of the land. 



So widespread is this feeling that in most, if not all. States the tax 

 assessor tends to agree with the farmer, and the woodlot seldom bears 

 its full statutory levy — which is perhaps fortunate. 



Under such circumstances it is a foregone conclusion that promoters 

 will be able to utilize the prevailing sentiment against the forester's 

 forests and in favor of the land-shark's "farm." and no exploitation, be 

 it ever so fraudulent, seems to have been interfered with by local 

 residents, so long as it was of alleged "agricultural" character. Whether 

 in California eucalyptus, Texas pecans, Montana cherries, Wyoming 

 oats, Michigan clover, or Florida citrus ; whether the fraud lie in alkali, 

 frost, lack of water, floods, or in the character of the soil or the char- 

 acter of the promoters, "agricultural development" seems always to 

 have been regarded as something sacrosanct, its promoters as inviolate, 

 its trustees of necessity honorable, its investigators of questionable 

 character, and its victims inconsiderable, but damned, knockers. 



That a settler, having chosen his homestead for better and for worse, 

 should "pull" for neighbors is understandable enough. His gregarious 

 instinct, his need for funds for schools and roads, his hope of increased 



' State I's. Donald, February 12, 1915. 



