MICHIGAN ROADS AND FORESTS. 



FOREST RESERVES 



IN THE WEST 



Forest reserves in the west have been in- 

 creasing with such rapidity under the admin- 

 istration of President Roosevelt that a storm 

 of criticism has come from western senators 

 and lumber interests and in tlr main has cen- 

 tered about the head of Gifford Pinchot, the 

 chief forester. It is to him more than to any 

 one man in the United States that the develop- 

 ment of this great service is due, although 

 without the support at every step of President 

 Roosevelt his hands would have been tied. 

 Beginning as an unimportant bureau in the 

 department of agriculture, the forest service 

 has now come to have an entity of its own 

 and broad powers over selected portions of 

 the public lands. In the closing days of con- 

 gress, easterners who have in the past given 

 comparatively little attention to the problems 

 of the far west were considerably surprised at 

 the concerted attack made by several western 

 senators on the forest policy of the adminis- 

 tration. 



Misconception of the actual purpose and 

 probable results of the forest service policy 

 and opposition to the general public lands 

 policy urged by the president are the two 

 main causes for the hostility of the forest 

 service. For reasons allied to this wave of 

 criticism and also because the name was a 

 tnisnomer the designation "National Forest" 

 lias been substituted for "Forest Reserve." 



In his successive messages to congress the 

 president has discussed public land questions 

 in a way that aroused the general feeling of 

 alarm among certain interests in the west. 

 Naturally the interests which have found their 

 profit in fraudulent operations under the pres- 

 ent laws land grabbers, timber grabbers and 

 range fencers were not likely to favor the 

 changes intended to put a stop to their oper- 

 ations. It would be a mistake, however, to 

 suppose that the desire for illicit gain is the 

 motive which actuates all of the western 

 people who have not been willing to follow 

 the president's lead. 



The whole tendency of things in the west 

 tends to promote recklessness in the use of 

 natural resources, and to cause them to look 

 with leniency on questionable methods of ac- 

 quiring title to property from the public do- 

 main. The people are too new to the region, 

 too unattached, too hustling, to give great 

 thought to the distant future. Boom develop- 

 ment is far too much the ideal for which most 

 people are working. The distinction between 

 exploitation and real upbuilding is that be- 

 tween the man who develops the country and 

 the man wrfo skins the land. This is the ad- 

 ministration argument in support of its forest 

 policy: 



The national forests are undeveloped prop- 

 erties. They contain resources basic to the 

 industrial life of the several western states, 

 so that their wise conservatism is essential to 

 the permanent welfare of these states. But, 

 to make them useful, large capital expendi- 

 tures are necessary. Even to protect them 

 properly calls for a far greater sum than con- 

 gress would be likely to vote. Nor would it 

 be just for congress to take from the na- 

 tional treasury this money which would be 

 expended for local benefits, when the money 

 can be raised perfectly well by a moderate 

 charge upon the users of the national forests 

 for valuable privileges or materials. The only 

 way to find the means for developing the na- 

 tional forests at the present time as they 

 should be developed lies in securing a revenue 

 from them. 



The area of the national forests in 1891 was 

 2,437,120 acres. This has increased steadily, 

 except during the period from 1893 to 1890 

 inclusive, until today the acreage of the na- 

 tional forests is 148,281,230. On February 1, 

 1907, there were 136 forest reserves in the 

 United States, with a total acreage of 123,- 

 350,161. 



One of the last acts of congress before ad- 



journment was to pass a law forbidding the 

 cre-uion of forest reserves except by congress 

 in the six states of Washington, Oregon, Mon- 

 tana, Idaho, Wyoming and Colorado. The ef- 

 fect of this act would have been to delay the 

 extension of national forests in these states 

 had not 'the president, as soon as he became 

 aware of the purpose of .congress, rendered 

 the legislative will practically void by adding 

 seventeen million acres to the national forest 

 area in those states by executive order. This 

 great acreage is divided into thirty-two sep- 

 arate reserves or forest-. 



It is impossible to say how much remaining 

 public bud though probably not a very small 

 proportion is suitable for national forest pur- 

 poses, because no satisfactory examinations 

 have been made of this land to determine its 

 best use. Instead of answering this question 

 the following statement comparing the stump- 

 age of the national forest with the stumpage 

 of the western states is of interest. 



The estimated stumpage of the national 

 forest is 330,000,000,000 feet. An estimate- of 

 t'-~ western states, which includes only some 

 of the states for certain species, and omits 

 several species, gives 800,000,000,000 feet as 

 the total stumpage of the region. Probably 

 only 25 per cent of the timber of the states 

 in which they are located is included in the 

 national forests. 



The only lands among the national forests 

 which have been thrown open to settlement 

 are those which were restored to the public 

 domain March 10 bsl. This was not forest 

 land, but a part of it was intended to be used 

 for experiments in forest planting. It was 

 restored because agriculture on part of the 

 ?rea had become possible by means of the 

 Campbell' system of dry farming. 



Lands temporarily withdrawn from entry, 

 comprising 550,400 acres in Colorado and 

 370,000 in Washington, were released this 

 month. No other areas .of importance have 

 recently been released, tnough it is the active 

 policy of the forest service to withhold no 

 land more important for other purposes than 

 for forest growth. 



Under the administration of President Har- 

 rison 13,416 710 acres were added to the forest 

 reserve; under President Cleveland the total 

 became 25,686.320, and under President Roose- 

 velt the total is 56,876,934. The following 

 shows the growth in area of the national for- 

 ests from 1891 to the present time: The growth 

 in the area of the national forests is shown in 

 the fact that in 1891 the total acreage amount- 

 ed to 2,437,120; this was increased to 17.928.- 

 070 in 1893; in 1906 it had grown to 127.1(14.- 

 371, and on March 15 of. this year the total 

 acreage reached the high water mark of 148.- 

 281,230. In area the reserves were increased 

 during the fiscal year 1905-6 from 85,693,422 to 

 106,999,138 acres. In revenue they brought in 

 $767,219.96, as against $60.142.62 for the pre- 

 vious year. In timber sales there were dis- 

 posed of for immediate or early removal near- 

 ly -300,000,000 board feet of lumber at stump- 

 age price ranging up to $4" per thousand (be- 

 sides other material to a large value), as 

 against 96,060,258 board feet, with a maximum 

 price of $2.50 per thousand in 1934-5 and (!'.),- 

 257,710 board feet in 1903-4. The amount of 

 free-use permits granted in the same years also 

 showed progressive increase. In the year 

 1904-5 the reserves were under forest service 

 control only after February 1. 



Local sentiment has sometimes been un- 

 favorable to the creation 'of reserves before 

 their effect upon the public welfare was under- 

 stood; but opposition has always dissolvec 

 under the test of actual experience. The re- 

 serves do not withhold land from agricultural 

 use. Though they were made from the mosl 

 rugged and mountainous parts of the west anc 

 were intended to include only land unsuitec 

 for agriculture. By the act of June 11, 1906, 

 the right is given settlers to homestead within 

 the reserves wherever strips and patches of 

 tillable land can be found. At the same time, 

 through their water-conserving power, these 

 forests fix in regions of scanty rainfall the 



amount of land which can be brought under 

 the plow, since at best much otherwise fertile 

 and must go uncultivated for want of water. 

 Without forest preservation much of the land 

 TOW under irrigation would have to be aban- 

 doned again to the desert. 



It is not the policy of the forest service to 

 make money out of the reserves for the gov- 

 rnment. They arc administered on the same 

 irinciple that a private estate is administered 

 )y an executor; to make /t pay the greatest 

 returns to the beneficiaries, in this case the 

 people of the United States. By an act of 

 :ongress 10 per cent of the gross receipts 

 from 1he national forests are made over to the 

 several states in which the reserves are situ- 

 ated for the benefit of the counties which 

 would otherwise receive no revenue from a 

 part of their area. This redressed a real 

 grievance. Eventually, it is hoped, the coun- 

 ties affected will find themselves far better off 

 than they would have been without the re- 

 serves, for, it is argued, private ownership fol- 

 lowed by exploitation would have destroyed 

 the sources of revenue by leaving little or 

 nothing of permanent taxable value. 



On the floor of the senate opponents of Mr. 

 Pinchot's forest policy conceded that he had 

 won over the stock men to his way of think- 

 ing, and Mr. Wilson, secretary of agriculture, 

 approves Mr. Pinchot's policy in these words: 

 "I wish to commend the heartiness and good 

 spirit with which the asociations of western 

 stock men have co-operated in our efforts to 

 enforce fair and just measures for the regula- 

 tion of grazing in the interest of all users of 

 the forests, and in the interests of the public, 

 to whom these forests belong. The charge 

 of grazing fee, made for the first time during 

 the last year, though reasonable in view of 

 the advantages of grazing regulation to the 

 stockmen and the cost of reserve administra- 

 tion to the government, and justly due in the 

 interest of the public, might have been ex- 

 pected to cause dissatisfaction and friction. 

 On the contrary, as soon as the reasons for 

 the charge and the method in which it would 

 be applied had been explained, it was gener- 

 ally approved and paid willingly and promptly. 

 It was followed by no falling off in the num- 

 ber of stock grazed in the reserves. In some 

 cases the associations of stockmen have vol- 

 untarily aided the service in settling local dif- 

 ficulties. Their whole conduct has shown re- 

 markable moderation, far-sightedness and 

 readiness to recognize and accept what is in 

 the permanent interest of their industry, even 

 though it involves the sacrifice of immediate 

 personal advantage." 



MINES DEPEND ON LUMBER. 



The Detroit newspaper correspondent who 

 says that the mines of the upper peninsula 

 are not worried about the lack of timber 

 displays a lack of knowledge of conditions 

 here and a lack of interest in the cause of 

 the miners that is incomprehensible. It takes 

 millions of feet of timber to support the 

 iron and copper mines of the upper penin- 

 sula. That timber is absolutely necessary for 

 the protection of the men working in tne 

 mines. Securing that supply has become a 

 problem of greater seriousness as the years 

 go by. Substitution for the timber in the 

 mines h.is not yet been found, and probably 

 never will be found. When the time comes 

 that our mines cannot obtain timber, the 

 mines will have to go out of business, and 

 the state of Michigan will be shy a revenue 

 source that goes a long ways toward paying 

 for the amusement of legislators at Lansing. 

 Houghton Mining Gazette. 



MONEY IN TREES. 



There was hauled recently from the Levi 

 THewelling farm, just south of Indian lake, 

 Cass county, the logs from a dozen red oak 

 I trees for which Mr. Flewelling received $250. 

 It is said there is an oak tree on the W. H. 

 McCoy farm, in the center of Pokagon town- 

 ship, Cass county, for which $80 has been 

 offered. 



