MICHIGAN ROADS AND FORESTS. 



11 



a body like this can make a great many things 

 that do not quite- pay today, and yet are over- 

 whelmingly for the public interest, pay five or 

 ten years hence. 



"I believe, gentlemen, that you have it in 

 your power to put this great national work 

 where, twenty years hence, it will take care 

 of itself." (Applause.) 



North Carolina's Plea. 



Hon. Robert B. Glenn, Governor of North 

 Carolina, wrought the conference up to a pitch 

 of enthusiasm such as had not been reached 

 through the entire two days' sessions. He 

 said: 



"What has caused the present condition? 

 If you have listened to the papers that have 

 been read you have learned that our forests 

 are being denuded; our water powers are be- 

 coming exhausted; our land is being washed 

 away and made worthless; our harbors are 

 rilling up; our commerce is being paralyzed; 

 and something must be done to stop this 

 waste, to stop this extravagance and to bring 

 forward a remedy that will enable this great 

 Xation to go forward as it has never done 

 in the past. 



"What is the' most serious of all these ter- 

 rible conditions confronting our people to- 

 day? I can answer almost in one word. 

 It is the failure of the people throughout 

 the states to protect the great forest re- 

 sources of the land in which we live. This 

 is the source and cause of all these other ills 

 of which I have just spoken. The people have 

 been regardless of the future, only living for 

 the present, thinking of themselves and not of 

 their children and their children's children that 

 are going to come after them, as all patriots 

 should think. Vandals are going into our 

 forests and denuding and destroying them, 

 and their hands must be stayed. Vandalism 

 must be stopped; there must be an end to 

 this waste, or else there can be no hope for 

 our soil throughout the length and breadth 

 of this Xation. 



"For this existing condition there must be 

 some remedy; but where must this remedy 

 come from? It must come alike from the 

 states and the Xation, state going hand in 

 hand with state, and the states joining with 

 the Xation. A state can control intra-state 

 commerce, but a state is powerless to con- 

 trol inter-state commerce. A state can con- 

 trol intra-state destruction, but a state is 

 powerless to control inter-state destruction. 

 Therefore we must have some means by which 

 we can be brought together, and by which 

 the Government and the states may go hand 

 in hand to prevent the devastation and the 

 destruction now going on. 



"Vox Dei is calling for the preservation 

 of the forests for humanity's sake, for 

 health's sake. Vox populi is calling for the 

 prevention of this waste for manufacturing 

 purposes, for electrical purposes, for dam 

 purposes, for commercial purposes for all 

 of these purposes. And vox Dei and vox 

 populi together shall be heard, and must be 

 heard, or else we will ge a tribunal that will 

 listen to the demand of this great American 

 Xation, as year after year we come here, urg- 

 ing our members to do their duty to the great 

 land in which we live today. 



Wisconsin is Denuded. 



James O. Davidson, Governor of Wisconsin, 

 spoke along the same lines. He said that to 

 no state in the Union is the question of con- 

 servation of natural resources more vitally im- 

 portant than to the state of Wisconsin. Only 

 a few decades ago. he said, the northern and 

 eastern parts of Wisconsin were one broad 

 forest, broken only by occasional stretches of 

 prairie land. Pine, hemlock, oak and maple 

 grew in such abundance that it was the state's 

 proud boast that Wisconsin alone could supply 

 the whole country with timber for a century. 

 Anv't! its great forests were swamps and hun- 

 dreds fit" sma'l lakes, from which deep, swift 



streams rushed to form the rivers that added 

 th'eir volume to the Mississippi. But, with 

 its great forest wealth and its immense water 

 power, Wisconsin, like its sister states, lived 

 only in the immediate present. 



"Great lumber companies," said Governor 

 Davidson, "inspired only by an enthusiasm 

 and a greed which knew no bounds, at- 

 tacked these forests, engaging in a mad race 

 each to strip its territory, to market its lum- 

 ber first, and then to move forward and 

 continue the destruction. No tree was re- 

 garded as too small to escape cutting. 

 Trunks six inches in diameter were cut for 

 lumber. Millions of young trees and sap- 

 lings, which were too small to have any 

 commercial value, were crushed by falling 

 timber, or were cut make room for logging 

 roads. Those that escaped the ax of the log- 

 gers fell victims to forest fires, the destruction 

 by which can only be counted by the millions 

 of dollars a further melancholy evidence of 

 the carelessness with which our forests tracts 

 were guarded. 



State Feels the Penalty. 



"Today we are beginning to feel the pen- 

 alty for this indifference. Our proud posi- 

 tion as the greatest timber state of the Union 

 has passed to others. Thousands of acres 

 of land of no value for agriculture have been 

 rendered bare and practically worthless; our 

 swamps are drying up, and as a consequence 

 many of our streams have shrunk to but a 

 srrfall proportion of their former size.- The 

 destruction of our forests has taken from us 

 that great regulator of the streams, for with 

 no forests to protect the head water of rivers 

 and to detain the water upon the soil, we have 

 frequent freshets and floods and are confronted 

 with the problem of dealing with rapidly ris- 

 ing and falling stream volume a condition 

 which has already rendered many of our one 

 time valuable water powers practically worth- 

 less. 



Wisconsin Has Awakened. 

 "Wisconsin has, however, awakened to 

 its duty to the public; it created the first 

 state forest commission ever appointed by 

 any of the states, and this commission has 

 already developed into a Board whose la- 

 bors are characterized by a continuous and 

 progressive policy of forest administration. 

 Vast tracts of public lands have been made 

 into state forest reserves. Agriculturally 

 profitable land has been sold and the pro- 

 ceeds used to extend the resources, in less 

 fertile soil. The United States Govern- 

 ment has added a large tract, aimed to pro- 

 tect the head waters of our large rivers; 

 while lumber companies, at last recognizing 

 the state's wise policy, have dedicated sev- 

 eral thousand acres to the forest reserves. 

 Wisconsin has acquired over 300,000 acres, 

 and this acreage is constantly being ex- 

 tended. It has been the policy to concen- 

 trate these holdings in counties having the 

 greatest number of lakes feeding into large 

 streams, and in some counties the state now 

 holds ten per cent of the entire land area. 



Protects Water Powers. 

 "For the further protection of its water 

 powers, the legislature has authorized cor- 

 porations to erect a series of reservoirs on 

 certain streams, thus producing a uniform 

 water flow throughout the season. The lo- 

 cation of such reservoirs and dams, the 

 height of dams, the amount of land which 

 shall be overflowed, and the time and man- 

 ner in which the stored water shall be re- 

 leased, is determined by the State Board oi 

 Forestry; and the law also provides that 

 holders of such storage reservoirs shall be 

 permitted to charge reasonable tolls for 

 water used, provided a certain previously 

 agreed upon storage capacity is realized 

 such tolls not to exceed a net annual re- 

 turn of 6 per cent on the cash capital ac- 

 tually paid in. The capital of companies 

 such as these, and the ' rates charged, are 



under the 'strict' regulation "and supervision 

 of the State Railroad Commission. 



''Forestry is a new " science in America, 

 and no country has greater, need for the 

 adoption of its teachings. The state and 

 National Governments still possess millions 

 of acres of rich forests, a part of which 

 >hould be preserved for the benefit of fu- 

 -ure generations. The public forests must 

 be protected for the benefit of the public, 

 enlarged as conditions permit. When tim- 

 ber shall have ceased to be possible for fuel 

 purposes, when coal beds have approached 

 exhaustion, it is in our great forest tracts 

 that we will find conservators of the sub- 

 stitute for fuel water power and, in, ad- 

 dition, such forest tracts will rank as a most 

 prolific source of public revenue." 



PROVIDING FOR THE FUTURE. 



The Au Sable forestry farm on the south 

 branch of the Au Sable river, has completed 

 the planting of 73,000 seedlings in permanent 

 planting and has 12,000 in the nursery for 

 planting next year. Of the 85,000 seedlings 

 about fifty per cent are of white pine and the 

 remainder is made up of Norway, Scotch and 

 western yellow pine and Norway spruce. Also 

 1,200 ba'sswood and 1,200 black ash have b.een 

 set out. The Pere Marquette Fishing Club, 

 owning about '1,700 acres of land in Lake 

 county, began planting three years ago, 5,000 

 seedlings having been set out this year. A 

 year ago 15,000 were added to the planting. 

 This year enough were put out to make the 

 total planting 58,000 seedlings. These are 

 largely white pine and Norway. 



The Au Sable forestry farm company is 

 plowing a 20-foot fire bank all around the new 

 plantings. The company has ten men and 

 three teams to keep at work all summer in 

 clearing up and preparing for next summer's 

 planting, which will be on a far larger scale. 



FIRE FUND TOO SMALL. 



Forest fires have been raging in Northern 

 Michigan and have done a great deal of dam- 

 age. The heaviest losses were sustained in 

 Preque Isle and Cheboygan counties, al- 

 though Leelanau, Charlevoix and Otsego 

 counties also suffered considerably. 



Charles W. Garfield, president of the state 

 forestry commission, in speaking of the fires 

 in the northern part of the state, criticised 

 Game Warden Pierce, who is also fire warden, 

 for not sending men into the districts and 

 stopping the fires, stating that the warden has 

 full authority to hire men for this work. 



Asked what he was doing Warden Pierce 

 said: "I have plenty of authority, but not 

 the funds to pay for the work. I would like 

 to know how fire fighting on the scale neces- 

 sary, according to reports, could be done with 

 $10,000; that is the entire appropriation. We 

 have been organizing to do the best possible, 

 but the funds to pay a force of fire fighters 

 is entirely lacking." 



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