INFLUENCE OF CHIPPEWA FOREST RESERVE ON THE LOCALITY. 229 



depth. Where jack or Norway are found in pure stands, with- 

 out poplar or other hardwoods or white pine, it is an almost in- 

 fallible indication of the presence of a sandy subsoil and of 

 unfitness for permanent farm land. This statement is so far 

 reaching and so apt to arouse vigorous opposition that it should 

 not rest on the mere assertion. Neither will experience in Min- 

 nesota count for much, because of the comparatively short time 

 such soils have been attempted. But in Michigan and Wis- 

 consin this is no new problem, and the evidence is all one way. 

 The farmer who settles on jack or Norway pine soil spends his 

 accumulated savings, goes broke and pulls out, sooner or later, 

 to seek a fresh opening under more favorable conditions, leaving 

 his improvements behind to tempt some other unfortunate to 

 repeat the experiment. This inexorable law of nature, the sur- 

 vival of the fittest, is daily proving the unfitness of jack pine 

 sand for farmers, but at the expense of untold cases of ruined 

 homes, broken health and spirits, and clouded family prospects. 

 The throbbing activity of a land boom and an influx of settlers 

 into a hitherto undeveloped community may for a time avert 

 this result, but with the resumption of settled conditions, crop 

 failures and discouragement soon force the facts to the front. 

 For those who sneer at this statement I could wish no worse 

 fate than to condemn them to earn a living on the "farm land" 

 they have sold to poor but honest settlers with families to sup- 

 port ; and any federal policy which permits misinformed foreign- 

 ers or others to homestead such land is false and should be 

 rigorously condemned. Yet it must not be lost sight of that 

 these remarks apply in their fulness only to jack and Norway 

 pine sands. The conditions of clearing and farming other classes 

 of soil, even sands, not of this type, are difficult, due to the cost 

 of clearing, but are not impossible. 



Farmers on jack pine sands, except a few truck gardeners 

 near town, are of no benefit to a community in the end, though 

 they may create activity at first and stimulate trade until their 

 surplus is spent. Merchants cannot deal profitably with cus- 

 tomers who are unable to pay, though they can certainly trade 

 with them as much as they desire if that is their object. 



The Morris law provided that 225,000 acres of the 600,000 

 acres on the Chippewa Reservation, about Cass Lake, be held as 

 a forest reserve, allowing, however, almost complete removal of 

 the pine. The objections urged, therefore, are founded largely on 

 the supposed bad effect of preventing settlement on this land. 

 These depend for their validity upon the character of the land 



