12 



MICHIGAN ROADS AND FORESTS. 



EARNEST PLEA FOR 



FOREST PRESERVATION 



The beauties of the forest were brought 

 both in program and surroundings to the 

 Muskegon Women's Club at its iirst meeting 

 this fall. Miss Martha Baldwin, of Birming- 

 ham, chairman of the forestry committee of 

 the Michigan State Federation of Women's 

 Clubs, was the speaker. In honor of the oc- 

 casion, which was forestry day, the clubhouse 

 was decked with treasures of the woods. 



All of the main rooms of the buildings, the 

 tearoom, where tea was dispensed later in 

 the afternoon! the reception room, and the 

 auditorium stage, were massed with vividly 

 colored autumn boughs, grasses of all hues, 

 and ferns with curling leaves of golden brown. 



Miss Baldwin's address was as follows: 



You remember the old song, "Uncle Sam 

 is rich enough to give us all a farm." No 

 doubt this is* true, but under the present land 

 laws millions til acres have been taken by 

 speculators. The desert land law gives them 

 a chance to take land without residence or 

 cultivation. Some one has compared this 

 state of things to Frank Stockton's story, 

 "The Lady or the Tiger, Which?" Uncle 

 Sam stands at the door of his possessions, 

 his foot on the threshold, his hand on the 

 latch, saying, "The Speculator, or the Home- 

 maker, which?'' The bill that restored mil- 

 lions of acres of land to the Irish people 

 and our National Irrigation bill which aims 

 to give homes to our people are two great 

 acts, both dealing with the same problem. 

 But we may well look with envy on Ireland 

 for the burden she is slipping off her should- 

 ers, while the American people are taking 

 on their's. 



No nation can have a more devoted people 

 than those who own their own homes. 1\ 

 has been truly said that no people ever went 

 ar in defense of the boarding house. 

 Some day the full story of our immense land 

 steals and timber steals may be told. It will 

 never be a story told with pride. In- the 

 train of land monopoly all sorts of evils have 

 always followed. 



The time was when the very name Michi- 

 gan suggested trees and forest beauty, but 

 the thought of the value of logs and lumber 

 carried with it most power and with it the 

 destruction of our greatest source of wealth. 



In many Michigan cities fine mansions sur- 

 rounded by beautiful grounds are pointed om 

 as the property of men who made their for- 

 tune in the lumber woods. Yes. but close 

 your eyes and see thousands of acres of tree- 

 less wastes, acres from which not only the 

 valuable trees have been taken, but where 

 the young growth has been destroyed and 

 left to the ravages of fire and stock. Legiti- 

 mate business is one thing, greed another, 

 and in his greed the lumberman has left his 

 mark on section after section of our fair 

 land. This state of things, after years of 

 labor with our astute legislators, led to the 

 establishment in 1899 of a State Foresty Com- 

 mission with a grant of 57.000 acres of land 

 ,in Roscommon and Crawford counties, as a 

 nucleus for a forestry reserve around the 

 sources of the rivers in that part of the state. 

 Through this commission chairs of forestry 

 were established at the University of Michigan 

 and the Michigan Agricultural College, and 

 these schools are doing fine work in sending 

 out young men who know the needs of forest 

 service. New York. Pennsylvania and Minne- 

 'ad in the care of their forests, and they 

 have even conquered in a measure, the fire 

 and the thief. 



There are too many high in authority, how- 

 ever, who want to make it easy to steal lands 

 and cut timber. It is estimated that two 

 million acres of land are going to specula- 

 tors every month twenty-four millions in one 

 year. President Roosevelt in his Memphis 

 eh said: 



"Coal mines, oil and gas fields, and iron 



mines in important numbers are already 

 worked out. The coal and oil measures which 

 remain are passing rapidly, or have actually 

 passed into the possession of great corpora- 

 tions, who acquire ominous power through an 

 unchecked control of these prime necessities 

 of modern life; a control without supervision 

 of any kind. We are consuming our forests 

 three times faster than they are being repro- 

 duced. 



"Some of the richest timber lands of this 

 continent have already been destroyed, and 

 not replaced, and other vast areas are on the 

 verge of destruction. Yet forests, unlike 

 mines, can be so handled as to yield the best 

 results of use, without exhaustion, just like 

 grain fields. 



"Our public lands, whose highest use is to 

 supply homes for our people, have been and 

 are still being taken in great quantities by 

 large private owners, to whom home-making 

 is at the very best but a secondary motive 

 subordinate tO'the /desire for profit. To allow 

 the public lands to be worked by the tenants 

 of rich men for the profit of the landlords, 

 instead of by freeholders for the livelihood 

 of their wives and childre'h, is little less than 

 a crime against our people and our institu- 

 tions. 



"The great central fact of the public land 

 situation, as the public lands commission well 

 said, is that the amount of public land pat- 

 ented by the government to individuals is 

 increasing out of all proportion to the num- 

 ber of new homes. It is clear beyond perad- 

 venture that our natural resources have been 

 and are still being abused, that continued 

 abuse will destroy them, and that we have 

 at last reached the forks of the road. 



"We are face to face with the great fact 

 that the whole future of the nation is directly 

 at stake in the momentous decision which is 

 1 upon us. Shall we continue the waste 

 and destruction of our natural resources, or 

 shall we conserve them? There is no other 

 question of equal gravity now before the 

 nation. 



"It is the plain duty of those of us who for 

 the moment are responsible to make inven- 

 tory of the natural resources which have been 

 handed down to us, to forecast as well as we 

 may the needs of the sources, and so to 

 handle the great sources of our prosperity 

 as not to destroy in advance all hope for the 

 prosperity of our descendants. 



"As I have said elsewhere, the conserva- 

 tion of natural resources is the fundamental 

 problem. Unless we solve that problem it 

 will avail us little to solve all others. To solve 

 it. the whole nation must undertake the task 

 through their organizations and association,. 

 through the men whom they have made spec- 

 ially responsible for the welfare of the sev- 

 eral states, and finally through congress and 

 the executive. As a preliminary step, the in- 

 land waterways commission has decided, with 

 my full approval, to call a conference on the 

 conservation of natural resources, including, 

 of course, the streams, to meet in Washing- 

 ton during the coming winter. This confer- 

 ence ought to be among the most important 

 gatherings in our history, for none have had 

 a more vital question to consider." 



We can help along these lines even as the 

 women of Minnesota helped to bring about 

 a >ystem of forest fire protection under the 

 care of an able band of forest rangers. This 

 fire protection has saved to the state thou- 

 sands yearly and has placed her in the front 

 rank in forestry legislation. Man's work do 

 you say? Who placed a sex on work? Not 

 nature. She sends her winds, her birds, her 

 to carry the pollen, and the seeds, and 

 and plants grow together, eacli doing 

 their best. Why should not men and women 

 work together. There is not an evil in our 

 land hut that leads to the home, and wise is 

 the woman who steps forth to ward off its 

 approach rather than wait until it has g 

 a foothold there. 



This gospel of forcstrv teaches unseliish- 

 as one who plants for himself must of 



necessity plant for others, and for future 

 generations. With black walnut lumber at 

 $200 per 1,000 feet and cherry at $150, what 

 better heritage can a man leave his children 

 than to plant these today. Mothers teach 

 your children to venerate a tree. If he breaks 

 and destroy a sapling now, he will not vote 

 right in the years to come. Our home sur- 

 roundings must be beautiful from the outside 

 as uell as the inside. "Woodman spare that 

 tree'" came from the heart of a woman, a 

 plea for the home. But this forestry work 

 is not of the sentimental kind. It is a matter 

 of dollars and cents. The day has passed 

 when the woman's club movement can be said 

 to be toward mere superficial self culture for 

 members, and among the many problems of 

 the hour to us Michigan forestry comes 

 among the Iirst, if not the Iirst. It means 

 the continuance of our wood working indus- 

 tries, our fuel supply, our commercial fruit 

 growing, and even flow of our streams, the 

 safety of our soil, the availability of our har- 

 bors and beauty of our state. 



Indiana has a good law. It exempts from, 

 tax permanent forestry reserves, and provides, 

 that the reserves shall not be used for pasture 

 until the trees are four inches in diameter 

 and permits only one-fifth to be cut annually. 

 Michigan has received many dollars from the 

 tax on timber lands and shall she now be- 

 grudge the support of a system that shall 

 in a few years make ample returns for care 

 and protection? The celebrated Dr. Oswald 

 said. "There is more health from shade than 

 from sunshine. Spain in the glory of her 

 ancient wood lands was the F.den of Europe, 

 while treeless Spain is the Gehenna of pov- 

 erty and disease. Forest shaded Sicily pro- 

 duced athletes and philosophers, heroes and 

 merchant princes. While Sicily in its present 

 sun blistered condition evolves bandits and 

 beggars. The entire coast of the Mediter- 

 ranean has been cleared and has lost four- 

 fifths of its population and nine-tenths of its 

 productiveness." 



Fort-sis equalize the climate and break the 

 cold winds, h<!ld the moisture and protect the 

 sources of our streams. Where forests are 

 cut streams dwindle and lakes grow smaller. 

 The arid parts of our country are the tree- 

 less pans. Probably no state in the union 

 has a greater variety of tree and plant life 

 than ours. The gulf states boast the grand 

 live oak; California the graceful pepper tree, 

 but neither of these cau compare with our 

 elms and maples, and when these, our special 

 pride, are varied with the oak a tree that is 

 fast disappearing with the pine, the poplars 

 and basswood, the ash and the thorn we can 

 challenge the world for beauty. 



The Michigan State Forestry Commission 

 was formed to protect the forestry interests 

 and it asks the help of every man, woman 

 and child in the state, and it especially urges 

 the teaching of forestry to children through 

 Arbor Day, Children's Day, etc. It is the 

 purpose of the forestry commission to take 

 the pine barrens of our state, seed them with 

 three seeds where it is necessary and make 

 them a source of profit. In the lower penin- 

 sula north of the southern line of Mecosta 

 county lie fourteen million acres of these 

 lands, and that is only a portion of the state. 

 The lands as a rule are not good for crops 

 as the manj- abandoned firms clearly proves, 

 but a crop of trees does not exhaust the soil 

 as a farm crop does, and land will easily 

 grow a crop of whatever is native to that 

 land. Nature tries hard to reforest but she 

 has two great enemies fire and thief. K^ep 

 these out and nature will bring us back the 

 forests, though never quite so grand as those 

 forever gone. Two million feet of timber 

 has been taken in one year from Michigan 

 forests. As logs are scaled the waste in scal- 

 ing would make two million cords of wood. 

 But not for lumber alone did the destruction 

 go on. The pulp industry in IS'.tx produced 

 1,500,000 tons of pulp, which would require 

 two million cords of wood for its production. 

 \<> wonder our forests have disappeared. We 



