THE STATE REVIEW. 



Forestry in Michigan. 



An Address Before the Ladies' Lake Side Club 



of Manistee, Mich., December 10, 1906, 



by J. J. Hubbell. 



God prepared Michigan as a garden for 

 trees, and He makes no mistakes. Michigan 

 is a good place to grow trees and before it 

 was settled was covered by nature with a 

 magnificent growth of forest. No doubt in 

 the divine plan this timber was designed to 

 supply the needs of the vast prairies to the 

 south and west of us. The early settlers of 

 Michigan did not seem to comprehend the 

 plan, and large areas of Michigan were cut 

 over and the timber destroyed -to make room 

 for farms. Later the growing demand for 

 lumber in the west pointed out the way to 

 make use of our forests, and our lumbermen 

 came into action and cut and shipped our 

 timber by the million of feet. Michigan has 

 furnished much of the copper for the elec- 

 tric development of our whole country; also 

 the iron ore to make the steel to network our 

 country with railroads. These products of 

 Michigan are of minor importance, however, 

 compared with the forest products she has 

 contributed to make millions of comfortable 

 homes, and beautiful furniture, and spacious 

 barns and farm implements to be found 

 throughout the west. But in so doing we have 

 well nigh stripped the state of its beautiful 

 forest. 



Michigan is said to have at present about 

 6,000,000 acres of cut over land that have not 

 been taken and used for agricultural purposes. 

 Much of this land is not suitable for agricul- 

 ture and the most of it is land thrown away by 

 the lumbermen and now held by the state as 

 delinquent tax lands. The most of these lands 

 are burnt over. They are lying barren and 

 waste, and show little signs of growing an- 

 other crop' of trees. 



If Michigan is such a good place to grow 

 trees why don't we grow them? If nature pro- 

 duced such a magnificent forest once, why 

 doesn't it produce another? These are the 

 problems that the Alichigan Forestry Associa- 

 tion is trying to solve, and those who have 

 given this subject the most attention find 

 abundant reasons why trees do not grow upon 

 these cut-over lands. The first is forest fires 

 as a result of our wholly inadequate fire laws 



Have we no laws relative to forest fires? 

 Oh, yes, we have an excellent fire law, but it 

 is not worth the paper it is printed upon, be- 

 cause it is not enforced and there is no public 

 opinion to enforce it. The great head and 

 front of this fire protection is the state land 

 commissioner, William H. Rose, and he says 

 that the fire law is a dead letter; that he has 

 searched it diligently, and had found only one 

 thing that he could do, and that is to appoint 

 a deputy, known as chief fire warden. The 

 only thing I ever heard of the chief fire war- 

 den doing was to ride up and down the rail- 

 roads (on a pass) and post notices about loco- 

 motives, setting fires, etc. Did any one ever 

 hear of his being at a fire or taking any action 

 in regard to one? This is not all. The law 

 then proceeds to appoint over 500 deputy fire 

 wardens. The law is only applicable to that 

 part of the state lying north of towns 20 north. 

 Manistee is within the limits. Every supervisor 

 in Michigan north of towns 20 is a fire war- 

 den with authority to order out every able- 

 bodied man in his respective township to fight 

 forest fires, and those ordered out must go 

 under a penalty of $100 fine or twenty days in 

 jail. With such a fighting force, surely forest 

 fires should be promptly extinguished, but, 

 alas! the law does not stop there. If a good 

 supervisor thinks he smells smoke and hitches 

 up his horse and drives all over his township 

 and does not find a forest fire (only settlers 

 burning log heaps and stumps), he has lost his 

 day, as he can collect no pay unless he finds a 

 forest fire. Further, the law provides that no 

 supervisor can spend over $50 in any one 

 township in any one year. If he should be- 



come engaged in fighting a forest fire he must 

 be careful and not exceed this amount or he 

 may have to pay it out of his own pocket. 

 This is about as sensible a provision as it 

 would be for the city of Manistee to determine 

 by ordinance that its fire department should 

 not spend more than one hour in any one day 

 fighting tire. As a matter of act, the law and 

 its enforcement is a dead letter. The state 

 paid out last year in the carrying out of this 

 law the magnificent sum of about $800, and 

 you can imagine how much of that went to 

 actually fight fires after paying the expenses 

 of the chief fire warden. What is the remedy? 

 What we want and what the lumber and for- 

 est interests is entitled to is a goodly number 

 of paid fire and forest wardens to patrol the 

 most needy portions, at the most dangerous 

 times, under the direction of the state for- 

 estry commission. These wardens should 

 have authority to call out any able-bodied man 

 to assist, and without pay. It is a duty that 

 every good citizen owes the township, county 

 and commonwealth to assist in preventing the 

 spreading of forest fires. 



Another obstacle to reforestation Mr. Hub- 

 bell pointed out, is the method of handling 



1 



J. J. HUBBELL. 



state tax lands. He quoted from the report 

 of the Detroit Board of Commerce and Carl 

 E. Schmidt's address before that Board to 

 make good- his point. Mr. Hubbell declared 

 that no forestry can be carried on until we 

 have a fixed policy of setting aside lands for 

 this purpose. All lands returned to the state 

 not suitable for agricultural purposes should 

 be set aside for reforestation. 



Such a policy would be vigorously opposed, 

 not only by the most of the press, but also 

 by the land sharks who deal in tax titles, by 

 the registers of deeds who would have less 

 instruments to record, by the supervisors 

 whose tax rolls would be materially short- 

 ened, and by the few settlers on or near these 

 lands. There is' another class of men who 

 would object, the state homesteaders. The 

 state homestead law has outlived its useful- 

 ness. It is no longer used by the honest 

 settler.as a means of obtaining a home, but by 

 the dishonest settler as a subterfuge to get 

 possession of the land to pick up a little 

 cedar that may have been overlooked or left 

 by the lumbermen. The state homestead law 

 should be abolished in "totn" as a useless 

 law and a menace to forestry. 



The last and the most delicate question to 

 be considered is that of the taxation of for- 

 estry. 



The State Forestry Association contends 

 that forests should be treated as a growing 

 crop and taxed upon the >amc principle. The 

 present system is an inducement to the lum- 

 bermen to cut and remove the trees as fast 

 as possible. When the assessor goes to a 

 farmer and puts a valuation on his farm, does 

 he ask him to account for the crops he has 

 Harvested in the past year? If he asks the 

 farmer what has become of that large crop- 

 of corn he raised last year, he will be told 

 it was fed to the hogs, the hogs sold and the 

 money realized spent for groceries and cloth- 

 ing; and the groceries have been eaten up and 

 the clothing worn out. But saw logs, tan 

 bark wood and lumber are not so easily eaten 

 up or worn out. It is true such products may 

 be sold and disposed of prior to April 1, but 

 as a rule much more of the lumberman's for- 

 est products will be on hand April 1 than 

 of a farmer's products. 



In our present system of taxation it seems 

 to be the policy to put a valuation on every 

 thing in sight, and in the case of corporations 

 a good deal that is not in sight and then levy 

 a flat rate tax. But the true value of property 

 and the equitable taxes to be paid is much 

 better indicated by the benefits or revenue 

 derived from the property and in time no 

 doubt we shall come to such a system of 

 taxation. Whatever may be our future 

 methods, our present tax laws are the death 

 knell of nine-tenths, I might say of ninety- 

 nine-one-hundredths of all the trees standing 

 in northern Michigan, and then even prevent 

 the conception of reforestation by private in- 

 dividuals. The land devoted to forestry un- 

 doubtedly should bear its fair proportion of 

 taxes the same as the land that grows a crop 

 of corn, but this taxation should not include 

 the value of the trees, and should be based 

 rather upon the value of the land as perma- 

 nent revenue producing. It is proposed that 

 a uniform valuation be fixed applicable to all 

 forest lands through the state, or a uniform 

 fixed amount of tax per acre to be paid upon 

 forest lands. The first method is probably 

 the best. If a uniform valuation of $5 per 

 acre were established it could be increased in 

 the future if conditions warrant. This would 

 be of equal advantage to the farmer's wood 

 lot, the northern settler who has cleared part 

 of his lands and would like to let the remain- 

 ing timber stand for a few years, as well as- 

 the lumberman who would assist in paying 

 the taxes and when he cut his timber it would 

 become personal property. If the lands were 

 sold for agricultural purposes they would 

 become assessable the same as other lands. 

 The state lands set aside for forestry should 

 also be included in the lands assessed at this 

 low uniform value. If the state takes out of 

 market and settlement a considerable portion 

 of any one township or county it most as- 

 suredly should assist in bearing the burden of 

 taxation in these townships and counties. 



We do not want the state to sell its better 

 class of state tax lands for less than $5 per 

 acre, because if they are not worth that now 

 they soon will be, and we want to stop the 

 speculation in tax titles upon these lands and 

 their being constantly returned and adver- 

 tised and sold for taxes. 



If our laws could be modified so as to pro- 

 tect and favor tree growing, would it pay 

 to engage in reforestation in dollars and cents? 

 By the individual, no! by the state, yes! If 

 the state would set apart one-third of the 

 poorest of our cut over lauds for forestry 

 they would amount to approximately five mil- 

 lion acres. Every acre devoted to tree grow- 

 ing would produce wood, equal to 100 feet 

 board measure per year. After 25 years we 

 could commence cutting by thinning out and 

 gradually increase until we had a full yearly 

 crop of 500,000.000 feet and not impoverish 

 our forests. The state no doubt c'ould sell 

 ibis timber on the stump for at least $10 per 

 Hums ind, which would amount to $5,000.000 

 a year revenue from this source to the state. 

 Surely the state can well afford to spend $100,- 

 000 a" year and increase this amount as the 



