THE STATE REVIEW 



27 



The Forest Fires 



Continued from page 24 



just what conditions prevail in Delta and 

 other afflicted counties. When I hear from 

 him I shall be prepared to take some action." 



That the matter was certainly serious may 

 well be inferred from these statements, even 

 though they were based largely on hearsay 

 and the articles of other papers. Character- 

 istic and very important is the statement 

 that the gavernor even in such a fire must 

 call on Senator Fuller of Delta county for 

 information, when, at least on paper, the 

 chief fire warden is supposed to have an 

 agent in every township of the northern 

 counties and certainly should he, if he is not, 

 in position to furnish exact official informa- 

 tion. Evidently his excellency knew the 

 uselessness of this machine and the law 

 creating it. 



On the same date tne Ironwood News- 

 Record contained the following: 



FRIDAY'S FOREST *iKES. 



Villages Burned Out and Settlers Lose 

 Everything on East End of 



Peninsula. 



Friday of last week will be memorable in 

 the history of the Upper Peninsula as the 

 day of the big wind. If, on that day the 

 breezes, which since the first of the month 

 had been blowing from the south, has not 

 veered to the northwest and increased to a 

 40 miles an hour gale, the annual spring 

 smouldering wood fires would not have been 

 fanned into a hurricane of flames that in a 

 comparatively lew hours licked up property 

 in settled sections of six counties estimated 

 as high as $250,000. The fire did the most 

 damage in Iron, Dickinson, Delta, Menomi- 

 nee, Marquette and Schoolcraft counties, the 

 counties of tne west end of the peninsula 

 suffering little from fire. A portion of Saun- 

 ders in Iron county and one-half of the vil- 

 lage of Quinnesec in Dickinson county, were 

 destroyed. No section was hit as hard as the 

 300 miles or so through which the Escanaba 

 & Lake Superior railway runs. 



Since this paper is published in the dis- 

 trict, it may be inferred that things were 

 serious enough. 



On May 22 the Detroit News contained an 

 article headed as follows: 



HOMESTEADERS ARE A POOR LOT. 



Sufferers by Forest Fires More Lumbermen 

 Than Agriculturists. 



Their Employers Will Rebuild Their Burned 



Shanties; Little Suffering Reported. 

 Just why the public should be informed 

 at this time of the inferiority of these 

 pioneer settlers is difficult to see. Evidently 

 the writer forgot that in all lumbering dis- 

 tricts the pioneer settler normally has to 

 make his living in part at least by working 

 in the woods until his clearing can support 

 the family. If the object was to allay the 

 feelings aroused by the fires and to hush up 

 matters, the end certainly did not justify 

 the means. The public had a right and a 

 duty to feel sympathy for the lone settles 

 of those districts. Anyone who has gone 

 through the dangers and sufferings con- 



nected with such fires knows that these mat- 

 ters are underrated normally and not exag- 

 gerated. 



On May 23 the Iron Mountain Tribune 

 published a long article headed as follows: 

 ACCOUNT EXAGGERATED. 



Reports of Forest Fires Played Up This a 

 Fine Section. 



Upper Peninsula Far From Wiped Off the 

 Map and We Still Prosper. 



In this article the motive "Hush up at all 

 cost, don't keep away capital by shouts of 

 fire," needs not to be pointed out, it is too 

 evident. In this article the statement is 

 made: "One paper stated * * * that 

 400 square miles were burned over. There 

 was only one death and not a quarter of 

 400 acres was laid waste." 



This article has its counterpart in one of 

 the Evening News of same date headed, 

 "Burned towns are still intact; lurid stories 

 of U. P. Forest Fires fail to make good." 

 In this article former reports are branded as 

 lies, and it also states that "some fakers are 

 now printing stories that Upper Peninsula 

 business men, for reasons of their own, are 

 trying to belittle their stories of the fires." 

 But in this same article it is stated that 

 Commissioner Wells of the Escanaba rail- 

 way, declared that of 250,000 acres along 



their line hardly a square (mile?) in which 

 the fire did not appear. 



On May 26 a long article appeared in the 

 Evening News, headed as follows: 

 "U. P. FIRE LOSSES ARE NOW KNOWN. 

 Accepted Figures Place the Total Damage 

 at Not More Than $250,000." 



It probably did not occur to the writer 

 that, with fires in six or more counties and 

 covering (as he states himself) 250,000 acres 

 in one district alone, out of the eight or 

 more afflicted, that it would require the work 

 of 100 capable estimators for several weeks 

 to give even a rough estimate of damage to 

 mature or merchantable umber alone and 

 that under the circumstances any wrangling 

 about estimates of loss is, to say the least, 

 useless guess work. 



It is interesting in this connection that 

 the state fire warden places the loss at only 

 $100,000 according to the Lansing Repub- 

 lican of May 24. Whether this is due to still 

 greater lack of knowledge or due to eager- 

 ness to excel in the "minimizing" process 

 must remain uncertain. 



Almost comical is the assertion of one of 

 the writers that "the damage to growing 

 timber is very small." 



Sanctum simplicitas, what notions! Two 

 years' steady "cruizing" would not enable 

 this man to find out what he calmly asserts 

 without ever seeing the forest. 



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