Published Every Month by The State Review Publishing Company. 



Official Organ of t-hf Michigan Forestry Association 



and 

 The Michigan Good Roads Association 



Vol. 3. No. 2 



GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN, JULY, 1906. 



Price 10 Cents 



THE WATER FRONT OF GRAND RAPIDS 



The Month In Michigan 



The Forest Fires 



Since the last number of The State Re- 

 view was printed, abundant evidence has 

 teen given of the ne:d in Michigan for such 

 an organization as the Forestry Association. 

 Forest fires reminding us of those several 

 years ago when whole towns in the north 

 country were wiped out have ravaged the 

 Upper Pen'nsula and burned millions of feet 

 of mature timber, beside destroying all the 

 younger growth, which would have formed 

 a new forest in a few years had the land 

 been lumbered in a sensible manner. It is 

 impossible at this time to estimate with any 

 degree of accuracy the less that Michigan 

 has suffered. With the first news of the 

 fires wild guesses were made. Later when 

 the fires had been put out and the officials 

 of the lumber companies upon whom the 

 losses fall most, directly, could make them- 

 selves heard, they sought to make us be- 

 lieve tne damage had been comparatively 

 slight. But the first wild guesses were 

 probably as near the truth as these later 

 "conservative" statements by men whose 

 great object is to calm the fears of stock- 

 holders. 



Professor Roth, the State Forest Warden, 

 who contributes it. tim'ely; article on the sub- 

 ject to this number of The 'State Review, 

 estimates loosely that the loss in stumpage 

 alone is probably greater than $5,000,000. 

 And the loss in mature trees is only the 

 beginning of the total loss. Compared with 

 this the cost of maintaining a forest service 

 is so small as to be almost pitiful. And yet 

 this forest service would not only prevent 

 such fires as those of ibis spring, which 



sweep over whole townships of mature tim- 

 ber and by destroying timber that has a 

 vast present marketable value attract the at- 

 tention of the most callous of us, but it would 

 prevent those smaller fires which creep 

 through the cut-over lands, and by burn- 

 ing the young growth forever prevent our 

 sandy wastes in the north from reclothing 

 themselves with a forest cover that would 

 mean millions of dollars a year to the state, 

 not only as raw material, but as the cause 

 of many profitable industries. Michigan in 

 like a farmer who lets his grain be eaten 

 by crows rather than go to the slight trou- 

 ble and expense of dressing up a scare- 

 crow. 



The New Era Begins 



Politics in Michigan have been of a char- 

 acter interesting not only to the people of 

 the state, but to outsiders as well, for there 

 has been put to the test of actual practice 

 the theory of direct nominations. The law 

 so reluctantly granted by the last legisla- 

 ture is admittedly an imperfect and cum- 

 brous measure, made so with malice afore- 

 thought ir the opinion of some disgusted 

 advocates of pri?nary reform. But for all 

 that it, is workable, a fact proved by the 

 ten per cent or so of voters who took the 

 trouble to try it. 



There is no disguising the fact that it is 

 a great disappointment to those who have 

 labored lon^ and zealously to take govern- 

 ment out of the hands of the few who con- 

 stitute th> machines, and put it into the 

 bands of the many who constitute the par- 

 tic s. that moro voters did not turn out on 



June 12, even though the result was a fore- 

 gone conclusion. To have started the new 

 era goiig with a whoop and a hurrah would 

 have been more inspiring than to have it 

 sent on its way in the unconcerned casual 

 manner that it was. 



There is only one way to account for the 

 lack of voting on this question. It must 

 be classed with such other "issues" as con- 

 stitutional amendments which, however im- 

 portant they may be, never "draw" as well 

 as some little contest between Jake, the 

 Democrat, and Jim, the Republican, for a 

 year or two tenure of a five hundred dollar 

 office. Men are so constituted that their in- 

 terest is in men, not in measures, so unless 

 you can get a measure personified by hav- 

 ing some man identify himself with it and 

 then add to that by having some other man 

 vigorously attack the first one, public in- 

 terest will droop. 



The people of the Lower Peninsula of 

 Michigan desire a direct nomination law, 

 and they desire it earnestly. But there has 

 appeared no man who has thoroughly identi- 

 fied himst-lf with the measure, who cared 

 for it in its early years when it was nearly 

 friendless and advocated it in season and 

 out of season until his success and that of 

 the measure became one in the minds of 

 the people. Therefore direct nominations 

 here does not make the appeal to the imag- 

 ination that it does in Wisconsin, for in- 

 stance, where Senator La Follette personi- 

 fies one side of the question, and such men 

 as Senator Spooner the other, and where, 

 moreover, the game has not been won by 

 default, as it has here in Michigan, but only 



