MICHIGAN ROADS AND FORESTS. 



13 



the market and with the increased business ; 

 that has sprung up during the past few weeks 

 the railroads again want to do repair work, but ; 

 from present indications ties will not be suffi- 

 cientlv plentiful to meet all of the demands for I 

 at least a few weeks yet. The price has ad- 

 vanced several cents during the past week or 

 and it is now thought that during the 

 coming winter the small dealers will make up 

 their losses of last year. 



LOG LIFTING CONCERNS 



ARE HARD HIT. 



U. OF M. FORESTRY 



STUDENTS SAVE FOREST 



Fire, threatening the last stand of white pine 

 in the lower peninsula, was checked by U. of 

 M. fore.-try students, after old experienced 

 lumbermen had almost given up in despair. 

 The pine is owned by Sailing, Hanson & Co., 

 of Grayling. It '.ies rive miles east of that 

 village.' There are ?.000,000 feet of it. 



:ral university students joined the camp 



at the close of summer school, says the Tra- 



City Rccrd. Their course requires 



several weeks work in the woods. The boys 



worked hard. They arose in the morning to 



see the sun come up in a thin haze of smoke. 



They quit at night, watching it sink into the 



a dull, molten ball. Weeks passed. The 



smoke became thicker. 



There are not many farmers in that part 

 of the country. Their combined efforts could 

 not stop the flames that were crawling through 

 the second growth, going nearer and nearer the 

 edges of the pine each day. 



At times, when the wind blew from the 

 northeast, the smoke hung low and thick 

 over the little lumber camp. At other times 

 the sun would shine weakly through the pall. 

 But the lire advanced steadily through the dry 

 underbrush. 



Work in the camp continued without a 

 break. The foreman gave no thought to the 

 fire. Xo rain had fallen for weeks. It was 

 expected every day. Several hours of steady 

 downfall would eliminate the danger. But the 

 rain did not come. 



One night a swamper, covered with dirt and 

 dust, walked into the bunk house. 



"I worked "ii the butt of a tree this mornin' 

 an' the top wus burnin'." he told the boss. 



Xext morning a hah" dozen men were sent 

 out toward the fire. They found several 

 places ablaze on the edges of the pine. They 

 stamped out the lire. And a mile further on 

 re still ran through the underbrush and 

 curled around stumps and saplings. 



That night the back firing began. The wind 

 rose. It drove the fire faster and faster. It 

 jumped one stretch that had been fired. It 

 began eating into the pine. 



"How the dickens did those instructions for 

 back firing that we boned on last spring start 

 off anyway?" asked one college boy of an- 

 other. 



"Oh. it was this way." and his pal began to 

 explain the scientific method that is taught in 

 the univt- 



Then these students began to work. It was 



clearly their first practical experience. They 



worked hard. By noon of the next day the 



fire had been headed away from one corner of 



the pine. When darkness came another cor- 



-aved. Then the entire camp turned 



followed the instructions <~>i the students, 



:ed like fiends until morning and the fire 



was checked. 



The underbrush burned on. But the fire 



raveling in another direction. The camp 



slept al! the next day. The smoke pall thinned. 



And S.000,000 feet of white pine had been 



saved. 



Log lifting companies in Michigan in order 

 to conduct their operations successfully will 

 have to make terms with the persons owning 

 property bordering on the different streams, 

 according to a decision of Judge Sessions of 

 the Muskegon circuit court. The case was 

 that of Robert T. Lane against the Muskegon 

 Log Lifting and Operating Company. 



It will be remembered that last year a Mr. 

 Whitman brought suit against the company, 

 seeking to enjoin it from recovering the logs 

 in the Muskegon river on which his property 

 abutted, claiming the logs under riparian 

 rights. The supreme court decided that the 

 logs were the property of the original owners, 

 and that the company could reclaim them if it 

 had purchased the logs or was acting as agent 

 of the original owner. 



The result of the conclusion of the Mus- 

 kegon court is that a man's property is his 

 to use as he chooses regardless of the con- 

 venience of others, and the judge issued a 

 permanent injunction forbidding the company 

 from trespassing on the property of Mr. Lane 

 or using it in any way. 



The decision is of far-reaching importance 

 to the company in its further operation in 

 taking deadhead 'ogs from the river and dry- 

 ing them before floating them to the mills in 

 Muskegon. The company is entirely at the 

 mercy of the farmers along the banks of the 

 river and will be obliged to make such terms 

 with them as it can or leave the logs where 

 they are. 



Judge Sessions devoted his entire discussion 

 to the legal point involved in the case, whether 

 or no the landowner on the shores of a navi- 

 gable river has the right to forbid the use of 

 his banks to persons driving logs in the stream. 

 His decision is that the owner of the land is 

 absolute dictator as to its use. 



The very words of the defendant company 

 are quoted against it by the judge, who says: 



"In the opinion in the Whitman case (the 

 case recently decided in favor of the same 

 company by the supreme court where Whit- 

 man claimed the deadhead logs were aban- 

 doned property and belonged to the owners of 

 the adjoining land) it is said: 'Defendant very 

 properly disclaims, in oral argument, and right 

 to put these logs on complainant's land. Its 

 agents and servants in so doing are unlawful 

 trespassers upon the complainant's premises.' 



"Xotwithstand its disclaimer so expressed in 

 that case and the rule of law thus stated by 

 the supreme court, the defendant has now 

 changed front and strenuously insists that the 

 use of the banks for piling deadhead logs 

 thereon is a necessary incident to the naviga- 

 tion of the stream with such logs and that it 

 not a trespasser, but is entirely within its legal 

 rights in so using the premises of complain- 

 ant. This contention cannot be sustained. 



"Navigable rivers are public highways, but 

 the easement or right of travel upon the same 

 is confined within its banks. * * * The 

 public has no greater rights in a navigable 

 waterway than it has in a highway on land, 

 yet no one would contend that, because of 

 either convenience of necessity, any person 

 would have the right to pile saw logs upon the 

 land of another outside of the limits of the 

 highway. 



"If the defendant has the legal right to 

 place its logs upon complainant's land and 

 leave them there for a period of six months 

 or more, then, if the necessity should arise, it 

 would have the right to establish a sawmill or 

 lumber yard upon complainant's premises and 

 there to convert these logs into lumber and 

 other products which could more readily be 

 transported and floated down the river." 



The opinion quotes voluminously from de- 

 cisions of the supreme court to uphold the 

 decisions reached. 



The other contention of the company was 

 that, supposing it is a trespasser on Mr. Lane's 



land, he has an adequate remedy in a court of 



law and can sue for and recover all damages 



sustained. It was also contended that the 



amount of damage to Mr. Lane from the use 



of his banks would be insignificant compared 



I with that the company would sustain if it is 



I unable to secure its logs from the bed of the 



I stream. On this point the decision is as fol- 



i lows: 



"It would be a novel rule of law which 

 would require a court of equity to weigh in 

 the balance the benefits to accrue to a wrong- 

 doer from his own unlawful and unwarranted 

 acts and the injury to result to the innocent 

 sufferer from such wrongdoing and to refuse 

 aid unless the damage to the latter out- 

 weighed the advantage of the former." 



Although the decision of Judge Sessions in 

 the log lifting company case on the face of it 

 appears to put the company in a bad way 

 should the farmers who own land along the 

 river choose to be nasty about it, as a matter 

 of fact there is small probability that the com- 

 pany will be greatly hampered in its work of 

 getting its logs out of the river, says a Muske- 

 gon correspondent. 



The only real effect of the decision, which 

 it seems likely will stand in the higher court if 

 appealed, will be that any farmer who does 

 not desire to have the company's deadhead 

 logs placed on his land does not have to have 

 them there. 



But the company is favored by the geo- 

 graphical and geological and geometrical fact 

 that a river has two banks. True, both banks 

 belong to the farmers who live along the river, 

 but even five cents a log will net the farmer 

 quite a comfortable rental for whatever por- 

 tion of his land it is found necessary to cover 

 with logs. 



Therefore, it is hardly likely that farmers 

 will be found at any point along the river 

 who will combine on both sides to hold up the 

 company. More than that the fact was brought 

 out in the testimony in the case that the com- 

 pany already has contracts with many of the 

 farmers along the banks of the river. In 

 Muskegon county almost the entire length of 

 the stream has been secured on one side or 

 the other of the river. 



It is safe to say, therefore, that the real 

 to the company will not be great if any- 

 thing at all. 



LOGGERS HOLDING OFF. 



The lumber concerns and individual jobbers 

 who operate in the district south of Marquette 

 on the line of the Chicago & Xorthwestern 

 railway, have not yet made a start on their 

 season's work, and a Xegaunee contractor 

 says that no preparations are being made for 

 an early resumption. The forest fires have 

 kept some from starting and others have de- 

 layed because they have not made any ar- 

 rangements for the disposal of their output. 

 Practically no work is being done, whereas a 

 year ago this month several jobbers had start- 

 ed on their season's work. There is very little 

 demand for either lumber or poles of any de- 

 scription. It is reported that most of the 

 larger concerns still have a considerable 

 quantity of lumber on hand. 



The prices for various kinds of fimber are 

 a little off at present and this is another rea- 

 son why the owners of stumpage who usually 

 cut their own timber are not pushing opera- 

 tions. Most of the stumpage owners have 

 made up their minds to not sell their timber 

 right now, but will wait until they get a good 

 figure for it, as they believe prices will be 

 much better next season. Stumpage is now 

 being held at a stiff price, in spite of the fact 

 that ties, cedar poles, pulp wood, and other 

 classes of timber are much below the prices 

 prevailing this time last year. 



The C. H. Worcester Co. recently had sawed 

 at the Cleveland Cliffs Iron Company's mill at 

 Munising some of the finest clear pine planks 

 ever seen there. The planks are 16 feet long, 

 30 inches wide and three inches thick. 



