THE STATE REVIKU'. 



Michigan Forestry Association. 



The Michigan Forestry Association was organized in Grand Rapids August :!(). l!>0.->. having for its object the promotion of a rational system ot 



forestry in Michigan. 



Green, Ontonagon ; Secretary 



The society is managed by the following roster of officers: President, John II. Hir-sell, of Detroit; Vice-President. Thornton A. 

 cretary, Henry G. Stevens, Detroit; Treasurer, J. J. Hubbell, Manistee; Board of Directors, Mrs. Francis King, \lrna; Charles 



. 7 T TT..U1 1 TT 1_j__ . C* "\ f T__ /"* 1T\ t T T -VT -r * ^~, . 



J. Monroe, South Haven; L. L. Hubbard, Houghton ; S. M. Lemon, Grand Rapids; H. N. Loud, Au Sable; George R. Horton, Fruit Ridge. 

 The State Forestry Commission Charles W. Garfield, Grand Rapids; Arthur Hill, Saginaw ; William H. Rose, Lansing. 



Mr. Schmidt's Address. 



Address of Mr. Carl E. Schmidt, before the 

 Board of Commerce of Detroit, after presenting 

 the resolutions on forestry, adopted by that body 

 on Tuesday, October 16, 1906: 



Michigan has about six million acres of waste 

 state tax lands. These waste lands have come to 

 the State of Michigan by reason of the non- 

 payment of taxes of former owners, and I think I 

 could make the situation clear to you most easily 

 by describing how these lands come into the 

 possession of the state, and why they are re- 

 tained. When these lands were sold they were 

 covered by virgin forests of valuable timber, as 

 for instance, pine in the main, and it was bought 

 by the lumbermen of the state at a stipulated 

 price. The desirable lumber, in the first place 

 the pine, was taken off, and as the land then had 

 no more value to the lumberman, he wished to 

 stop paying taxes on same. To most easily avoid 

 this, and to enable him to still hold the land, 

 was. under our laws .a very simple problem. All 

 that was necessary for him to do was to deed 

 these lands to some man outside of the state. 

 The act relating to delinquent taxes stated that 

 if the title of the lands was in any wav being 

 contested legally, the state could not claim title ' 

 until the legal contention, whatever it might be, 

 had been settled. So the lumberman simply no- : 

 ticed some suit in the local courts, and made no 

 effort to ever bring the suit to trial. The result 

 was that the lands were held as though thev 

 were his own. and in course of time he found 

 that the remaining timber, let us say the hem- i 

 lock- had again become valuable. The opera- 

 tion was very simple. He selected such forties 

 of the land as cont?ined a profitable quantity of 

 hemlock lumber, had the man in Ohio or else- I 

 where deed it back to him, paid the taxes, settled 

 the lawsuit as far as these 40 acres were con- 

 cerned and took off the hemlock. It was now a 

 simple matter for him to again re-deed the lands 

 and have the original method of procedure re- 

 peated. 



Because of this reason we see the fluctua- 

 tions in the holdings of the state in state tax" | 

 lands, varying anywhere from five to nine million 

 acres. In case he did not consider it worthwhile 

 to tie up these lands by the means described 

 above, he simply allowed the land to go b.-.:k to 

 the state, which however means to the auditor 

 general. The law distinctly states that the aud- 

 itor general was to advertise these lands for a ; 

 period of five years, and if, after the expiration 

 of tin's period, the taxes were not paid, or the 

 lands sold, he was to deed these lands to the 

 state land commissioner, or in other words to the 

 State of Michigan. We have seen by the report 

 of the legislative committee that the state in five 

 years expended $264,000 in advertising tax lands 



for sale, and paid out for clerk hire in the auditor 

 general's office $570,000, a total of $834,000. and 

 in these five years succeeded in selling $::o:!.nno 

 worth of land, or, it was costing the Ma: 

 per year to sell $60,000 worth of land. If these 

 $166,000 per year were used in reforesting, they 

 would have annually reforested :;i,ooo acres if 

 land, or 310.000 acres in ten years. If planted, 

 for instance, in Carolina poplar, we would in te'i 

 years have the first 31,000 acres available as a 

 crop, which would give iir- a pmlit, based on the 

 result in Wurtemberg, of $16(1. noo. 



I find advertisements in some of the magazines, 

 by the state land commissioner, offering Michigan 

 lands for sale at from 75 cents to $2.50 per. acre. 

 In addition to this our state every little while 

 holds so-called clearance sales, at which it sells 

 lands at practically any price that may be offered. 

 Some other states are wiser in this respect, as 

 for instance, Wyoming, Montana and Washing- 

 ton, who have placed a minimum price of $10 per 

 acre on their tax lands. These states also rent 

 ', some of their lands for grazing purposes. Wyom- 

 i ing last year received $100,000 as rental for some 

 of its lands. 



The clearing out of the forests, in addition to 

 having most harmful effects on climatic con- 

 ditions in our state, has a more direct and 

 i easily ascertainable detriment. For instance, in 

 ; 1890 we had invested in the State of Michigan 

 Si :_'.-,. 1 100.000 in lumber and dependent indu 

 Today statistics show an investment of $50,000,- 

 000, or a loss of $75,000,000 of capital t<> our 

 I state. This, in addition to the money going out 

 of the state for the purchase of lumber elsewhere. 

 ] We are, for instance, today getting our shingles 

 from the Pacific coast, pine from Georgia, oak 

 from Mississippi. 



The state is also losing in population in the 

 lumbering districts. A fair sample is losco coun- 

 ty. In 1890 the population in this county was 

 15.2:24; in 1900 it was 10,246. 



The tax law of 1899 states that lands delin- 

 quent for five years should be deeded by the 

 auditor general to the state land commissioner 

 after the lands have been examined to ascertain 

 their value. So as to keep up the advertising 

 graft, this part of the law which is mandatory, 

 is rarely, if ever, carried out. The result is that 

 these lands are advertised for 10, 15 or more 

 years, and there are some instances where lands 

 have been offered for over 25 years, without a 

 sale being made. 



In addition to the above, this law must have 

 intentionally been made confusing. In one place 

 it states that "The commissioner of the state land 

 office and the auditor general shall act jointly as 

 to lands which they may consider not advantage- 

 ous to open for homesteads, and shall affix a 

 minimum price.'' Another part of the law says: 

 "These lands withheld from homestead entry 

 shall be offered for sale by the state land com- 

 missioner at a price discretionary with him. An- 

 other part savs : "lie is authorized to sell, but 

 at not less than the appraised valuation of the 

 land." All of which means, in effect, that while 

 the lands are offered for public sale, the land 

 commissioner may, if he sees fit. put a discre- 

 tionary price upon them and sell them behind 

 closed doors in bis private office. What the ef- 

 fect of such a proceeding may be, or is, may be 

 easily imagined. 



Let us compare this, our method, in the hand- 

 ling of waste lands with the methods obtaining, 

 for instance, in the middle of Europe. There the 

 land is largely like our own. many acres being 

 unsutted fur agricultural purposes. The kingdom 

 of Wurtemberg has 487.000 acres of forest lands, 

 from which its net profits last year were $2.450,- 

 000. Supposing that five million acres of our 



