272 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



REMARKS BY C. L. SMITH, MINNEAPOLIS. 



Ladies and gentlemen, I think that I drafted the first bill of any 

 sort regarding- this subject that has ever been introduced in the 

 Minnesota legislature, and, in order to impress upon the minds of 

 those here who are in favor of these resolutions some of the difficul- 

 ties in the way of carrying them out, I think I may relate a little of 

 the experience I had in regard to that matter. 



A man was chairman of the forestry committee in the house that 

 3'^ear who took considerable interest in the matter and who thought 

 that it would be both practical and advisable to enact some such 

 legislation, but the majority of the committee was against him and 

 refused to report the bill to the house. The bill was also introduced 

 in the senate, but the chairman of the forestry committee in the 

 senate declared that legislation of that sort was unnecessary, that 

 it was uncalled for, that the people did not ask for it, and that it was 

 simply a scheme of some people in the state who had a lot of land 

 that was worth nothing for any other purpose to unload it on the 

 state for forest purposes. If I noticed properly the reading of these 

 resolutions, there is one amendment that I think ought to be made, 

 ought to go into these resolutions, in order to divert any argument 

 of theirs; and that is, it is important that such lands as now belong 

 to the state or may come into the possession of the state by sale for 

 taxes (an explanation in regard to government lands and the way 

 in which title is to be acquired would probably be in place here) 

 should be set aside for forest purposes. I went before that commit- 

 tee to present some arguments, but found great difficulty in 

 bringing this question up. Twenty-five years ago, there were bluflf 

 lands, lands that were stony and hill sides along the Minnesota and 

 Mississippi rivers. They were covered with a fairly healthy growth 

 of timber, trees varying in size from six to twenty inches in diam- 

 eter. That land was secured as homestead or by pre-emption, and 

 sometimes no title acquired to it at all, but the timber simply cut 

 off — it wasn't worth anything for any other purpose. It was eventu- 

 ally sold for taxes. Fire ran over it, but in some instances it was 

 protected, and in a few years there was a rank growth of young 

 timber growing again. In one instance where I investigated, a 

 man told me that in twenty years he cut thirty cords of oak wood 

 off from an acre of such land. Now, that land in three or four years 

 from the time the original owner first got title to it was advertised 

 for taxes. It was sold for taxes. It came into the possession of the 

 state; and twenty j'^ears afterwards a man acquired tax title to that 

 land on payment of an average price of three dollars and fifty cents 

 an acre, cut off thirty cords of wood per acre, and the land was sold 

 for taxes the following season. He never paid any more taxes on it. 

 That land now belongs to the state. And what is true of one par- 

 ticular tract is equally true of hundreds of acres of land along the 

 Mississippi and Minnesota rivers. It will be true, in the future, of 

 the thousands and thousands of acres of land that have been sold 

 this year for taxes north of here. Thousands of acres of land were 

 sold for taxes this year in counties north of us. On those acres of 

 land is today a handsome growth of young timber, and if we shall 



